Discoveries
by wencharella
Summary: Findings, forgings and revelations for the Brotherhood... Lance attempts to win Pietro's heart, while Todd and Fred become secret millionaires. Slash!
1. Chapter 1

It was a completely normal Saturday afternoon at the Brotherhood Boarding House. Nothing out of the ordinary. The walls were as cracked and mouldy as ever, the carpet just as grey and hairy, and the room smelled just like it always did: a mixture of damp, pizza, beer and Todd.

Everybody happened to be downstairs that afternoon, as the Brotherhood was deciding on a message for their (stolen) answering machine. Wanda, who wasn't in the slightest bit interested, was sitting in a large armchair that had stuffing poking out of the sides like flab in too-tight jeans. She was filing her nails, painted black of course, to sharp enough points to do Todd some serious damage the next time he lay his slimy hands on her. Lance was sitting in the other armchair, trying to figure out where the English section of the instruction manual for the machine was. The other three were sitting around the coffee table; Todd perched in traditional amphibian squat, Fred with his massive legs splayed in front of him, and Pietro reclining on one arm like a Classical statue of a Greek god.

"How 'bout this: You've reached the Brotherhood. Leave a message after the beep or we'll hunt you down and smash –"

"No," Lance said firmly from over the manual, interrupting Fred's suggestion. "Too violent, even for us."

"Oh." Fred's face fell into a disappointed frown, and he screwed up his eyes in thought. "Leave a message after the beep... or else?" he finally suggested.

Lance rolled his eyes and went back to the manual. Having decided that there _wasn't _an English section, he was now trying to find some foreign words that he vaguely recognised.

"I really don't think we should be _threatening _people to leave a message," Pietro scoffed, an arrogant smirk curling the corners of his mouth.

"You got any better ideas?" Fred growled, clearly hurt that the idea he had been thinking up for_ an hour _wasn't up to scratch.

Pietro sat up suddenly, his blue eyes glittering with excitement. The Brotherhood knew him well enough to know that this signalled one of his offbeat ideas.

"I do, as a matter of fact," he said, clicking his fingers at Todd. "Beatbox," he demanded, and on request, Todd made a hip-hop beat.

Pietro talked over Todd's beat. "Hey hey," Pietro said in a voice a few octaves lower than his own. "You've reached Pimpsilver and the House of Bros. Drop your message after the –"

He was interrupted by a cynical "Ha!" from Wanda, who had finally looked up from her nails. "_Dick_silver and the House of Dorks more like."

Todd screeched with laughter and went to high-five the object of his lusty dreams, who scowled at his hand like it was covered in dog-shit.

"Dicksilver! Aw man, you got told," Todd sighed, clutching his sides. Pietro stuck his tongue out at Wanda and narrowed his eyes, trying to think of a funny nickname for her that wasn't the Scarlet Bitch.

"I also called you a dork," Wanda said icily to Todd, who stopped laughing immediately and shuffled off to continue beatboxing in the corner.

"What if your dad rings and hears you calling yourself a pimp?" Lance asked simply, crushing Pietro's suggestion.

"It's _ironic_," Pietro replied, clicking his tongue as if to say 'duh, moron'.

Glossing over the fact that he had no idea what ironic meant, Lance put down the manual and folded his arms. "Pimpsilver and the House of Bros makes us sound like a gay brothel."

Pietro arched a black eyebrow. "Aren't we? What with your eighties porn hair and Dyke-Boots over there?"

"Eighties -?" Lance spluttered as his hand went instinctively to his long, messy brown hair. Wanda shrugged off Pietro's comment, knowing that she could actually do some major damage with her faithful scuffed platform boots.

"Cat got your tongue, Bon Jovi?" Pietro quipped at Lance, lying back on the floor with his arms crossed under his head.

"Fuck you," replied Lance, unintentionally making the ground shake. "All I said was that your message was dumb."

"_You're_ dumb," Pietro retorted, flicking his silver hair out of his face. "You don't get it."

That was true. Lance had always found it hard to keep up with the speedster's current interests, obsessions and in-jokes. Maximoff talked so fast it was hard to tell what was serious and what wasn't. Plus he was so damn _fickle_. One week he'd love soccer and the next it'd be photography, one night he'd listen to grunge and the next it'd be Japanese pop. It was difficult to see eye-to-eye with somebody who was constantly changing his mind.

But then Lance and Pietro didn't often see eye to eye. They definitely didn't on Pietro's new boyfriend, the psychotic fire-obsessed mutant, Pyro. Pyro (or John, as he was really called) was never without his precious lighter and had a habit of 'accidentally' setting things on fire, for example Lance's guitar just happened to get flamed after a disagreement over pizza toppings. Pyro laughed too loud and for too long, and he deliberately used Australian slang that nobody except Pietro understood. It was like Pietro and Pyro were an exclusive little club of insane hyperactive mutants. They were always disappearing somewhere together, though that was infinitely better than watching them swallow each other's tongues.

But the worst thing was, while Pietro seemed to be ridiculously into Pyro and liked him almost as much as he loved himself; Pyro was clearly more interested in Wanda. Whenever Pietro's back was turned, John-boy would try his luck with her – he'd wander into her room or go over and whisper something lecherous in her ear or even attempt to touch her. To Wanda, this blatant attempt at cheating was even worse than Todd's slimy advances. Pyro had no shame in doing it, even when Pietro was in the same room. It was unbelievably disgusting to watch the Aussie perv all over his boyfriend's twin sister whilst Pietro gazed at him, oblivious.

Nobody liked Pyro, and when Lance tried to tell Pietro that Flamey was bad news, he'd been accused of being homophobic. Why would he care that Pietro was gay, or bi, or whatever he was? It was so obvious that Maximoff was fruity as punch; they'd all accepted it long ago. He didn't care one bit that Pietro was going out with a boy – but he did care that Pietro was going out with a mental, rude pyromaniac with stupid hair.

At least _John baby_ wasn't there right now, smoking up their house and calling them skanky bogans. Lance flicked through the manual boredly, looking for a suitable foreign insult for him. Smacna? Klevenjik? Telefono?

"So, Prince Alvers doesn't like my message," Pietro was saying, staring up at the ceiling where a sticky donut that Todd had thrown up there a month ago was dangling perilously above his head. "Since nobody has any other suggestions, we'll just do the standard message. Y'know, 'You've reached the Bayville Boarding House. We're not here to take your call right now, so please leave a message after the tone.' Boring, I know."

Todd's yellow eyes lit up and he hopped over to Pietro, grinning hopefully. "I can beatbox in the background, yo!"

Apart from Wanda, Todd's current obsession was beatboxing. At the moment he couldn't seem to go five minutes without breaking into a beat. Admittedly, he had a good sense of rhythm and it livened up the atmosphere (as well as filling awkward silences), but it could get ever so slightly annoying.

"Okay," Pietro shrugged, thinking that a beat might kick that _amazingly normal_ message into life. He was still bitter that Lance had slammed his ironic gangsta-style message, which was clearly pure comedy. He pressed the button down on the machine, about to speak when Fred batted his hand away.

"You can't do the message," he drawled, looking very serious despite the fact that his pink tee-shirt and dungarees made him look like a gigantic baby. "Nobody will understand it, you go too fast."

This was a good point – people often needed Pietro to say things at least three times before they understood what on earth he was babbling about.

"Well, _you_ can't do it, you're too slow," Pietro sulked. "And Todd can't 'cause he's beat-boxing, and Wanda won't do it 'cause she's a massive bitch and if she did do it nobody would leave a message because they'd think 'oooh, what a bitch, I'm not calling _them_ again.' Anyway, we wouldn't want a chick to read our message or no girls would call us, though, actually, have you_ heard_ Wanda's phone voice? She sounds more like a guy than I do."

Here, Pietro had given a perfect demonstration as to why he couldn't do the message – without realising, his speech had ascended into hyper-speed rambling. Unfortunately, Wanda appeared to understand him and flicked his head hard with her newly sharpened nails.

"I'll do the message then," Lance said, knowing that he had the most normal and pleasant voice. Pietro, however, just sniffed and the tiniest of brattish pouts crossed his face.

"Perhaps I'll ask John to do it," he said, deliberately not looking at Lance.

This was too much for Alvers, who glared at the speedster and walked over to the machine defiantly. Pushing down the record button, he began to speak.

...

The evening after, Mystique had scheduled the Brotherhood in for a nice battle with the X-Geeks at Bayville docks. She'd left a message on their new answer-phone and had been the first to hear the new message.

"Nice message," she'd purred from the machine, and they could just _tell_ that she was smirking. "Lose the 'music' in the background, though."

Todd had been most offended at the suggestion that his beatboxing didn't cut it, and sulked all the way to the docks. When they got there, Lance turned the engine off and spun round in his seat to address the others.

"This is the big one guys," he said, the moon glinting off his bowl-like helmet. "We've gotta kick some X-Butt tonight. Remember, cover each other and don't let 'em trick you. Stay on your guard and," he took a deep breath, searching for another motivational cliché, "reach for the stars."

Pietro let out a snort of laughter. "Reach for the _stars?_"

"Can it, Pricksilver," Lance snapped. He scanned up and down for any sign of the Xavier Nerd Brigade, realising that he felt nervous. They couldn't afford to screw up again, and yet, he knew that they would.

"What's the purpose of this battle?" Wanda asked Lance, who shrugged in response. Wanda was beyond annoyed at having to leave the house on a Monday night to have a stupid fight with stupid people. The X-Men were still intent on trying to persuade her to join them – really, she couldn't see how her destructive powers could tie in with their world-peace vision.

Pietro jumped out of the Jeep and dashed ahead for a sign of their opponents. In just a second he was back without a hair out of place. "They're coming!"

So the Brotherhood got out of Lance's ancient, rusty old Jeep and assembled themselves into a textbook 'threatening pose' to greet the X-Men. A moment later, the opposite team were facing them in a threatening pose to threaten their threatening pose, and to say that the Brotherhood was outnumbered was an understatement.

As well as the usual line-up of Shades, Psychic Bitch, Shitty Pryde, the Über-Goth, Blue Thing and Spike-Boy (nicknames courtesy of Pietro), they were joined by six of the newer X-Geeks. Lance exhaled slowly and clenched his fists. How the hell was it fair to fight five against _twelve? _Or even more than twelve, considering that one of the younger kids could multiply himself. Damn it, this was not fair!

"Got any more X-Men in the jet, Summers?" Pietro asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Summers tightened his lips to a thin line. "If you're insinuating that we don't fight fair -"

"Let's get things rocking," Lance growled, making his first rock pun of the evening. He cracked his knuckles and stared violently at Summers, just Summers, indicating the trouble he was about to cause.

"Bring it on," Summers barked, and his hand flew up to his visor.

And in a shower of slime, spikes, rocks and explosions, the fight began.

...

"Why," Wanda glowered at the redhead, "do you always want to fight me?"

She threw a blue bolt right at Jean Grey's smug face. Jean threw it back effortlessly with her mind and Wanda ducked it, getting angrier by the second.

"You don't have to fight me, Wanda," Jean said to her, although her lips didn't move.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" screeched Wanda, shoving the girl away from her.

"Woah, no need for a catfight!" said a boy with brown hair, who shot out a sheet of ice from his fingers and coated Wanda in it.

"Bad move," she whispered and winked a heavily-lined eye at the Iceman. The ice around her fingers began to glow blue and she threw it off, sending it smashing hard into the boy. He hit the ground, arms flailing as he went. Wanda smiled a catty, half-smile at him and without warning, threw him up into the air again with such impact that he passed out when he hit the ground. She didn't even need to turn around to sense Kitty Pryde behind her, who she took out immediately with one bolt.

"That's why I won't join your team," she said sweetly to Jean Grey, who had gone very pale.

...

Nearby, Pietro and Lance were fighting Daniels, Summers, Rogue, the multiple brat and some kid that could turn herself into molten-lava. Really, it wasn't much of a challenge fighting the lava girl and Pietro, who had become quite obsessed with all things fiery, was pretty taken with her. Not that there was much time to reflect on this when he was constantly dodging spikes, optic blasts, fireballs and annoying clones of twelve year old boys whilst simultaneously avoiding Rogue's lethal touch. He was also trying to protect Lance, who was so intent on bringing down Cyclops that he hadn't even noticed the mutant missiles coming his way.

"Bet you're loving this, Daniels," Pietro sneered as he ran straight at one of the Multiples and tackled it to the ground. Unfortunately it just spawned more Multiples, which he decided to run a tornado around in the hope that this would finish the kid off. He could hear the Multiples screaming as the force he generated hit every one of them; he ran faster and faster until everything became a blur. Running so fast made him feel invincible – the wind in his hair, the looseness in his limbs, the way everything blended into a rush of colours... the inevitable thud to the ground. He blinked. What the hell?

Ah, Daniels.

Predictably, Spyke had trapped him in one of his classic spike cages. And worse was that, he was trapped in there with the Multiple kid, who was suffering from motion sickness after the tornado.

"LAAAAAAAAAANCE!" Pietro yelled, trying to distract his team-mate from his pointless grudge match. He could see Rogue advancing on him, taking off her gloves. "A little help here?"

Rogue glared at him through the spikes.

"Now Roguey," Pietro said in a 'let's try to be reasonable even though I just made your X-kid puke all over my boots' tone of voice. "You don't wanna put me in a coma, I'm too -"

But before he could finish his sentence (which probably ended in 'beautiful'), a great crack formed in the earth leading up to his spike cage and burst it open.

"Yes!" Pietro cried, raising a fist in the air. Trying to catch him off his guard, Summers fired a blast in his general crotch area which Pietro jumped just in time.

"Too slow," he taunted, running in a giant figure of eight around Rogue, Spyke and Cyclops. "Missed me, ooh, too slow, missed again!"

In his gloating, Pietro failed to notice a giant spike, which was gliding through the air like a javelin straight towards his heart. Lance acted on impulse, and before he knew what he was doing he had jumped, taken the spike and fallen with a searing pain in his left shoulder.

The moment played out in slow motion, and then everything was chaos.

"Look what you fucking did!" Pietro shrieked, delivering a super-speed kick to Daniels. Then he sped to Lance's side, desperate for a sign of life.

"Is... Is Avalanche alright?" Summers asked, suddenly coming over all serious as if he hadn't just been trying to kill Lance himself.

"BACK OFF!" Pietro screamed at him, blue eyes blazing. Rogue shook her head slowly at Daniels in disgust and Summers led him away, no doubt lecturing him about 'dangerous grudges'. That was the X-Squad's only saving grace – they always fought fair and knew when enough was enough.

"Lance... you okay?" Pietro asked, trying not to look at the pool of blood around his friend.

"Yeah... No... Freakin' hurts," Lance replied through clenched teeth, also trying to ignore the pool of blood. He couldn't work out what just happened. Why had he taken the spike for Pietro? Maximoff would've been able to dodge it in time, for god's sake!

"I... can't believe you did that," Pietro said softly, his eyes lingering on Lance's large brown eyes. "You saved me, man."

"I'd say it was nothing but... uh... it was. Get me out of here P, I need bandages."

Pietro nodded resolutely and looked around for any X-Geeks that might intercept them. When he saw none, he bent down swiftly and picked up Lance. "Hold tight," he said, and broke into a run.

...

Up by the fishy-smelling cargo crates and boxes, Fred and Todd were fighting Nightcrawler and the strangely named Berzerker. Todd, who always found himself fighting the German fuzzball, was caught up in an only half-serious wrestling match whilst Fred seemed to be immune to the bolts of electricity that Ray threw at him.

"You wanna be careful using electricity round water," Fred warned Ray. He could be very sensible when he wanted to be.

"Give it up, bugbreath!" Kurt growled after Todd bitch-slapped him with his tongue for the third time. Annoyed, he teleported to the top of a crate and pounced on the toad-boy from above.

Meanwhile, Berzerker had given up on trying to electrocute Fred and was now charging objects to throw at him instead.

"Hey!" Fred yelled as a sparking crate flew off his enormous belly and exploded in his face. He seized the electric boy by the front of his suit and threw him hard into a crate, which sparked and blew up.

"Man, that was trippy," Ray blinked from the remains of the crate. Kurt teleported over to help him out, Todd hopping over to examine the damage that Ray had done.

"Whoa," he said, his yellow eyes growing enormous in awe.

"Oh come on," Ray shrugged, spiking up his orange fringe with one hand. "I blew it up, nothing special."

"Check this out, Freddy," Todd whispered, still staring into the crate. Fred lumbered over and Kurt teleported on to his shoulder, peering into the crate nosily.

"HOLY FUCK!" Fred cried, pointing at the contents of the crate with a trembling hand.

"Mein gott! Ray, you gotta see this!"

They all stared at what Ray had uncovered for a good ten seconds before Ray spoke up.

"There's got to be at least... a million dollars there."

There was a beat where everybody eyed each other with great suspicion.

"IT'S OURS!" Todd demanded, jumping into the splintered crate with a deranged look in his eyes. "I found it, I call the shots."

"No way," Ray shook his head. "I blasted the crate, it's ours."

"Nuh-uh." Todd stuck out his long, green tongue. "Finders keepers! It's the Brotherhood's, fair and square."

Fred backed off from the crate and stood thoughtfully rubbing his Mohawk. "How 'bout we split it?"

"NO!" Todd and Ray said at once, glaring at one another.

"Blob's right," Kurt said, words which had probably never been spoken before unless addressing what made the best sandwich filling. "We split the cash and nobody gets hurt."

Todd eyed him suspiciously. "What do you X-Men want with _more_ money, yo?"

Kurt moved in close to Todd and put a hand on shoulder. "We don't have to tell anybody else about the money..."

"It'd be our little secret," grinned Ray, who had taken out a stack of bills and waved it under Todd's nose. The boy's eyes followed it greedily.

Fred narrowed his eyes until they were merely slits in his large, doughy face. "How do we know we can trust you?"

"Because we haven't called the other X-Men," Kurt pointed out simply. "If we told Scott, or Jean, they'd only make us give it to the police. And I could just 'port right outta here with the whole box if I wanted to."

"He got a point," Todd shrugged. "You know, I'm really startin' to like ya, Blue."

Kurt pretended to be disgusted, but he couldn't hide his grin. "So, do you agree to split the cash?"

Todd and Freddy looked at each other and nodded solemnly. Kurt was right – if he did let the other X-Men in on the secret, they'd only lose the money to some dorky charity. And there was no way they were telling Lance, Pietro or Wanda about the cash; it'd disappear quicker than they could say Rockefeller. Anybody with any sense would keep half a million dollars secret! But... since when did the X-Men have any sense?

"You guys can't tell nobody," Todd said warily. "It's gotta be completely secret."

Ray stuck out his hand. "Deal!"

The boys then counted the cash and split it accordingly, Todd taking a _little _more than he should. They filled their suits, shook hands and went their separate ways, daydreaming about all the things they could buy with their delicious, secret find.

When the boys returned from the battle to their respective teams, nobody could understand why they were quite so happy.

...

It took Pietro less than three minutes to run home carrying Lance. Lance found the whole experience something he definitely didn't want to repeat. The only good thing about it was that the feeling that his eyeballs and stomach were going to be left behind in the massive rush overruled the burning agony in his shoulder. Also, Lance was about twice the size of the lean speedster, and he didn't know how Pietro managed to run with all that extra weight without stopping. Little did he know that Pietro was very tempted to stop, just to show the whole of Bayville how he was carrying Big Macho Alvers like a new bride. Luckily, Pietro decided to cut Lance some slack for saving his life and for once, he knew that he had to be serious.

Pietro was incredibly good with his hands. He'd cut, sewn and altered all the Brotherhood costumes (naturally, making sure his was the sexiest), and often had to extend his sewing talents to stitching up wounds and bandaging. As soon as he got Lance into the house, he checked the wound, with his mouth in a thin line of severity.

"It's gonna hurt," he warned, and zipped upstairs to fetch his medical kit and a bottle of brandy which had two purposes: one, to sterilise and two, to numb the victim.

Lance looked up at Pietro. The front of Pietro's suit was drenched with blood, and his boots were stained with Multiple's puke. He was holding out the bottle of booze as if it were medicine.

"Drink this," Pietro muttered as he went to wash his hands. In a moment he returned, saw that Lance hadn't touched the brandy, sighed loudly and poured it down his team-mate's throat.

"JESUS!" Lance choked as he swallowed an enormous mouthful. Then another, and another, and the room began to sway. Pietro was mopping at his wound, not at all grossed out by the gaping flesh. Then, without any kind of warning, he doused the wound in alcohol and Lance grit his teeth as the scorching pain shot through him. Pietro threaded the sterilised needle and looked into Lance's face as if to question his trust.

Perhaps it was the brandy, but Lance found that he couldn't look away from that cobalt blue gaze. And Pietro must have noted this, because his eyes darted away the minute he saw that look in Lance's eyes.

"Ready?" Pietro held up the needle.

"Do it," Lance panted, tossing his sweat-sodden hair out of his eyes.

And Pietro had sewn him up with no further questions, listening to Lance count from one to two thousand under his breath. There was no questioning it; the boy was a true stoic.


	2. Chapter 2

"Where we gonna hide this shit?" Todd panicked, hopping from wall to wall around the squalid room that they shared.

"I'm putting mine in my underwear drawer," Fred drawled sadly. "It's not like anybody's gonna wanna look in there."

"Ditto mine, yo," Todd sighed, putting his greasy head in his hands. "D'y'think money can buy love, Freddy?"

"Maybe," Fred shrugged as he buried his wads of cash under a pile of gigantic heart-patterned boxers that he wore to reveal his softer side. "Is this about Wanda?"

Todd fell dramatically onto his bed, having placed his money at the bottom of a drawer full of stained boxers and rancid old socks.

"It's always about her, yo. She's a goddess, a princess, a beautiful vampire! I'm in love with her and I'd buy her the moon if she asked for it!"

Fred patted him on the shoulder with a huge, meaty hand. "Well, now you can, little guy."

They watched the door handle move as somebody tried to open it. They'd locked themselves in with the money and the others were already suspicious.

"What the hell's going in there?" Pietro demanded through the door, still rattling the door handle.

The boys looked at each other and grinned. Pietro didn't know what he was missing. None of them would ever guess what was stashed away in their underwear drawers... Oh yes, this was their little secret.

"We're in the money," Todd sang under his breath as he lay back and thought of all the things that he could buy to win Wanda's heart.

...

Lance lay awake in bed, watching the ceiling spin in slow circles. He was still fuzzy from all that brandy. Now that his shoulder was all bandaged up it felt comfortably numb. 'Hey, that's a song,' he thought drowsily. He sang a few snatches of the song to himself, hoping that he would drift off. Really, his whole body had gone to sleep but his mind was racing faster than Pietro had run home.

For one thing, he knew that Todd and Fred were up to something. They had come back whilst Pietro was finishing his stitches, and rather than stick around to tease Lance, they just rushed upstairs and locked themselves in. It wasn't like Todd and Fred to stay in their room – as far as Lance could tell, Fred hadn't even left for food yet. Whatever was going on in there, it was something major and he was sure that whatever it was, it would end up causing them a lot of trouble.

Another reason he couldn't relax was that _Pyro _was here. The Aussie had shown up just as Pietro was finishing the bandages, and Lance was ashamed to admit that he had been glad he was getting the Speedster's attention instead of Pyro. And when Pietro had finished bandaging him, he was doubly glad that Pietro's uniform was covered in bodily fluids so that he had to change before John would touch him. That delayed the uncomfortable spectacle of boys sucking face nicely.

"Petey taken care of y', has he?" John had leered at him whilst Pietro was upstairs choosing something devastatingly sexy to wear.

"What's it to you?" Lance had slurred in response, trying his best to pull his sloppy facial muscles into something that resembled a sneer.

"Means bugger all to me," John had shrugged, and Lance understood that actually, _Pietro_ meant bugger all to this jerk. Not that Pyro made any effort to hide it.

Then Pietro had come back into the room, wearing a pair of indecently tight black jeans and a grey vest that showed off his athletic body that narrowed into a delicate V at the torso.

"Time to light my fire," he'd said and buried himself in John's arms. Then Lance saw it again, that disgusting smirk of John's over Pietro's shoulder that said 'I'm having my cake and eating it, _mate_'.

God, Lance hoped that John caught fire sometime soon – just preferably not in their house.

What was also bothering him was why he took that spike for Pietro. Did that mean he was prepared to die for Maximoff? Fuck, this was a mess. And he was past the stage of denying it: he knew exactly why he'd done it. Ever since Pietro had opened up about his bisexuality and started dating the Australian mega-sleaze, Lance had begun to have abnormal feelings about Pietro. At first, he put it down to being tricked into having insecurities about his own sexuality. But time dragged by, and he couldn't take his eyes off Speedy, couldn't get him out of his head no matter how hard he tried. He'd beaten himself up about it and forbidden himself from being (gulp) gay. Was he gay? He never looked at any other guys, only Maximoff. And nobody would define Pietro as particularly macho, so Lance probably wasn't gay. Just... hopelessly obsessed with Pietro, who was hopelessly obsessed with a complete and utter fuckhead.

He could hear Fred snoring down the hall, and he buried his head in his pillow. Why the _fucking fuck _couldn't he get some sleep?

"Just ignore it," he whispered to himself. "Ignore it and it will all go away."

But he had tried that many times, and it didn't.

...

Wanda turned heavily in her sleep, dead to world. Her eyes were shut tight under her beloved leopard-print eye-mask, and she was dreaming. She saw a series of unconnected images flash before her eyes; a greyhound, a pavement crack, a lily-pad, red and purple balloons... Then she saw a candle that was burned down to the wick and set the rickety dinner table alight and there were flames, flames everywhere, she could feel the heat rising so vividly that she jerked awake and threw off her eye-mask.

She clutched her heart, seeing a dark shadow in the room. It was too tall to be Todd, who she imagined might be raiding her stocking-drawer or something gross like that. It was too muscular to be Pietro, who had come into her room one night after she'd had a nightmare and stayed with her until the morning. The dark shape had spiked hair that she didn't recognise straight away, until the realisation hit her like a dozen Blobs being fired at her from a catapult.

"You!" she hissed, not wanting to wake the others. She pounced on the stranger, pinning him to the wall by his throat. He struggled under her grip and as he moved, a ray of light from outside lit his face. She saw the large, twinkling grey eyes and the fuzzy blonde tuft on his chin and that all-too-familiar hungry mouth.

"I've woken the princess," he whispered back, seeming to enjoy being restrained this way. "And I didn't even get to kiss her..."

"You are sick, do you hear that, sick!" She twisted her grip on his throat so that he was practically choking, making his eyes pop. "What the hell were you going to do to me if I didn't wake up? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't wake my brother and tell him what I found you doing?"

Pyro coughed a little and his voice came out croaky from her deathlike grip. "He wouldn't believe y', love. He loves me. He hasn't a fuckin' clue what's going on."

Wanda glared at him, tightening her grip on his throat even more as he mentioned her poor sap of a brother.

"Trust me, he'll find out."

He laughed softly under his breath. "Why don't you give it up and we'll fuck right here, right now? I know you want it."

With that, he ground his crotch into her, and with revulsion she could feel that he was hard. She felt like projectile vomiting all over him at this point, or throwing him out of the window.

"Get out of here or I will kill you," she scowled, her eyes turning black with rage. She squeezed his throat extra hard to show exactly how easy killing him would be. His eyes popped again and his breathed hitched horribly in his throat.

"Are you going to go quietly?" she asked in his ear, thumbing the sensitive nerve behind it. Fearing death from this rather scary woman, he nodded. She released him and he turned sharply to leave, rubbing his throat.

It was only when he was at the door and he gave her that smirk that she realised this wasn't over.

...

Early that morning, Wanda went down to the kitchen to find Lance already dressed with a mug of very, very strong black coffee. He looked as annoyed and disturbed as she did, and he glanced at her pale face as she sat down. She wasn't wearing any make-up, and for once he could discern a resemblance to Pietro. She had the same almond-shaped eyes and strong, chiselled nose though her face was rounder and her lips were much fuller than his.

"Jesus," she moaned, rubbing her temples. Her hair was a mess and she was still in her red polkadot pyjamas, as if she had also given up on sleep.

"Are... are you...?" The Brotherhood boys were always reluctant to ask Wanda if she was alright as they usually got ranted at or violently hexed in response. Now, however, she looked defeated and drained and she just sighed.

"Pyro," she said simply, knowing that Lance would understand instantly. They didn't have much in common except for similar taste in shouty rock music, but they were both intent on obliterating Pyro from their lives. On hearing that dreaded name, Lance slammed his coffee mug down on the table.

"What the hell's he done now?"

Wanda looked around suspiciously, as if once again she'd find him in the shadows. "I woke up last night," she began in a hushed voice, "and he was in my room."

Lance's brown eyes went wide and he almost spat out his coffee. "He was in your room?"

She nodded, shaking a little with anger. "I think he was watching me sleep. I got him by the throat, and he asked me to... He asked me to have sex with him, the worm."

"WHAT?"

Wanda shushed him and Lance ran his hands through his shaggy brown mane, trying to compose himself. She took a deep breath and continued, whispering fiercely.

"And you know what; the bastard was totally getting off on it... Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't woken up?"

"Oh my god," Lance whispered. This just proved that all his worst suspicions. Poor Wanda, having to endure those creepy advances. Even Todd knew his limits! He put a tentative hand on Wanda's shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, fine," she said tersely. She hated sympathy of any kind, even though Lance's concern meant a lot to her. "I just want him out of this house and out of my life."

Lance wanted that too. It made him sick to think that Pyro was up there right now, in bed with Pietro who knew nothing about what his boyfriend was doing to his sister. If they told Pietro about this, he wouldn't listen and he would refuse to believe it. If only they could show him somehow – if there was a way they could catch Pyro in the act, Pietro would have no choice but to believe it. The question was... how could they trap the dirty dingo?

"What we need," Lance thought aloud, "is a camera and a honey-trap."

...

Pietro stretched out fully like a cat and opened his eyes to see the amused grey eyes of his boyfriend looking back at him.

"G'day, pretty."

"Don't call me pretty," Pietro yawned. "Girls are pretty."

"And your point is?"

For this 'hilarious' comment, Pietro flicked John's nose. "Man, was I out cold last night," he reflected.

John said nothing and let those long, white arms pull him in. Pietro's hands wandered up his chest, over his shoulders and towards the neck that Wanda had throttled last night. Immediately, John pushed his hands away and sat up. Visibly hurt, Pietro sat up too.

"Did I do something wrong?"

But John, who seemed to have gone selectively deaf, was pulling on his jeans.

"Johnny?"

Now he was putting on his shirt.

"John-John?"

The boy in question rolled his eyes as he put on his Converse. He turned back to Pietro, who looked like a child amongst the rumpled bedclothes.

"Nothing's wrong, babe," he said and pressed a non-committal kiss on Pietro's offered lips.

Pietro eyed him nervously as if he was afraid he would combust. "Are you going?"

"Yep," John said, avoiding eye contact. "Y'know what yer dad's like, can't be late."

He got up to leave and Pietro knelt up in bed, dragging the sheet with him as he reached for John again.

"Wait - will I see you tonight?"

"Yep," John smiled, his eyes lighting up. Pietro misread this as usual, as far as he was concerned, Johnny-boy was head over heels for him. How could he know that John was thinking of Wanda as he kissed him goodbye?

...

Just as Fred was turning into his French class, where he planned on doing nothing but falling asleep at the back, Todd cornered him and pushed him into an empty classroom with an air of enormous secrecy.

"Is it safe, yo?"

"Is what safe?"

Todd leaned in close and spoke out of the side of his mouth. "The cash, Freddy."

"Oh."

It took Fred a while to work out what Todd meant. It was almost possible to see the cogs turning in his head as his big pink face screwed up with concentration. Then he remembered. They were going to the mall after school with a hundred dollars each, which he'd stashed in his giant socks.

Though Fred thought he'd notice if somebody starting rummaging in his socks, he checked anyway. "Safe and sound," he reported like a soldier. "Although it's a little sweaty," he added as an afterthought.

"Eh, we can handle sweaty," Todd shrugged and jumped almost six feet into the air as Kurt appeared in front of them.

"Dude," Todd coughed, waving away the sulphurous smoke that had arrived with Blue-boy. "He's got two-hundred dollars in his socks, why you wanna scare us like that?"

Kurt frowned at the thought of what it would be like inside the Blob's socks. Damp, cheesy and probably crusty.

"Ray sent me to check that you haven't told anyone."

Fred folded his arms across his titanic chest. "We ain't."

"They're suspicious as hell though," Todd added. "Pietro's goin' crazy already."

"Quicksilver _is_ crazy," Kurt replied. Rather than defend their flamboyant and somewhat hyperactive team-mate, the other two just shrugged.

"How 'bout you, Fuzzy?" Todd asked, backing Kurt into the lockers with a flick of his tongue. "Told Baldy what's goin' on? Not that you'd need to, he could just jump straight into yo' head and BAM! Secret's out, yo."

This thought had kept Todd up all night – the X-Men lived with two particularly nosy do-gooder telepaths. All they had to do was tune into Kurt or Ray's innocent fresh little minds and they'd find out instantly.

"Chillax, bro," Kurt said. Todd winced at this horrible attempt to be cool. Next thing he knew, the German kid would be trying (and failing) to beatbox. "Prof doesn't suspect a thing. Nobody does."

"Then we're cool?"

"Ice cool. Uh, why have you got money in your socks, by the way?"

"Got a 'lil shopping spree planned after school," grinned Fred. "And it's all you can eat at Ling's Chinese Buffet. Hope they know I'm coming."

Todd couldn't believe he was about to do this, but he swallowed his pride with a large lump of slime. "Wanna come along, Elf? And Ray? Spend some dough?"

And Kurt, who couldn't believe that he was about to agree to hanging out with the Brotherhood, nodded dumbly. "Not that I like you guys or anything," he sniffed.

"'Course not," Todd smirked. Money: it really did make the world go round.

...

Lance was sitting on Wanda's bed watching her plaster her face in Creepy Goth Paint. He was surprised to find that her room was actually quite feminine, with plain white walls and a plain black bedspread. There were lots and lots of lavender-scented candles which gave the room a calming atmosphere. Now he could see why Wanda, who was irritable to say the least, spent so much time up here away from the chaos. It was also nice and clean, which was a massive bonus considering the rest of the house was caked in dust, mould, slime and pizza.

Why was he in Wanda's room? To discuss the plan they had entitled Operation PyroPerv. The AV department at school had very kindly lent Lance a tiny video-camera after he'd given the room a tiny taste of his powers. With it concealed in one of Wanda's don't-mess-with-me cactuses, they hoped to catch John at his worst behaviour.

Although she felt more than a little cheap, Wanda was dressed to impress in a red PVC corset that drew her boobs practically up to her chin and screamed 'Hello Boys'. Lance was finding it very hard not to look himself, so he imagined that it would be like Christmas for Pyro.

"This better be worth it," Wanda sighed as she coated her eyes in thick mascara. "I hope Pietro appreciates me whoring myself out like this for his sake."

Lance grinned weakly. "Well, he is Pimpsilver."

Wanda spun round on her chair to face Lance, who once again averted his eyes from the boobs. He was sure that if he looked at them just once, he'd get sucked in. Boobs were evil like that; all girls knew their dark allure. "Well, how do I look?" she asked.

_Don't mention boobs, don't mention boobs, _Lance willed himself, but before he could stop himself he had blurted it out.

"Your boobs are freakin' huge."

There was a deadly moment of silence. Lance buried his head in his heads, waiting to be hexed out of the window into the garbage. He just had to go and say it, didn't he? He wondered if he could use his powers to make a hole in the earth big enough to swallow him up, him and his stupid boob-lovin' mouth.

"Given the context, I'll take that as a compliment," Wanda said coolly, and began to paint her lips pitch black.

...

"This is insane," Ray muttered to Kurt as they loaded their plates with sticky, gooey Chinese food. "Us, hanging out with freakshow over there?"

He jerked his head in the direction of their table, where Fred was slurping Chop Suey out of an entire serving tray and Todd was using his tongue to pick out the beansprouts.

"Look, I know they're weird," Kurt replied, for this was undeniable. "But so are we, I mean – I'm blue and furry underneath all this, and you've got that hair -"

Ray covered his neon-orange spiked fringe protectively. "I like my hair," he protested. "It's unique."

"Certainly is," said Kurt, taking a large handful of prawn crackers. "All I'm saying is that we should give Toad and Blob a chance. We need them on our side, you know?"

"You," Ray observed, "are a sap."

"I'm not a sap," Kurt sulked. He looked over at Todd, who was once again beatboxing in between rapping about Egg Fu Yung. "Like it or not, we share a secret with those guys. And I don't know about you, but I wanna keep them sweet."

Ray rolled his green eyes and muttered 'sap' again. He wasn't happy that he'd had to walk around the mall for two hours so Todd could find a necklace with a W on it. W for what? Warts? And then he bought six identical heart-shaped boxes of candy, seventeen black roses, tickets to see BlackThrash in concert and a stuffed black cat. He was sure that the way Fatty over there was shovelling in Chow Mein, he'd be spending a similar amount of money to Todd on just food.

"Do we really have to stick around and watch them buy more crap?" he moaned.

"I have an idea to spice things up a little," Kurt said, and a devilish gleam came into his eyes. "Can you say makeover?"

...

Wanda stared guiltily at the camera. This was going kill her brother, she knew that much.

Next to her, Lance shuffled his feet nervously. "We did the right thing," he said as if to convince himself.

"I hope so." Wanda had changed out of her corset immediately after getting the footage that they needed, and was now wearing a loose black sweater with artfully-torn holes down the sleeves.

They heard the front door shut, which was the signal they had been dreading. Pyro had left, and Pietro was instantly hammering on the door to Wanda's room.

"Lance, Wanda, what're you doing in there? Puh-lease tell me you're not fucking!"

Wanda jumped to her feet. "We're most certainly not fucking, idiot!"

"Then let me in," Pietro demanded through the door, scratching it with his nails to make a super-annoying noise.

Ignoring this, Wanda turned to Lance who was fiddling with her laptop, which was also 'borrowed' from the AV department. "Is it ready?"

Lance nodded. The footage was downloaded and ready to watch – the question was, was Pietro ready to watch it?

"Let's get this over with," he said gravely, as if they were about to execute the Speedster.

Wanda opened the door to let her brother in, who was wearing red sweatpants. "What's going on?" he said, picking up on the serious mood immediately.

"Sit down," Wanda ordered. She stayed standing, as far away from the laptop as possible.

Pietro frowned at her as he sat down or her bed. "What's going on?" he asked again.

"P, there's something you need to see," Lance said softly. He could feel Wanda's pain as she stared blankly out of the window – right now, he was wishing for the ground to swallow him up again.

"Is this to do with our father? Is it the X-Men? What's going on? C'm'on, show me the tape, you're freaking me out!"

With a shaking finger that had nothing to do with his mutation, Lance pressed play on the laptop.

Pietro's stomach dropped as the scene unfolded in front of him. This was filmed in Wanda's room, and the date in the corner of the screen said it had been just three hours ago. There was Wanda, looking surprisingly slutty. God, he hoped that it wasn't going to be a sex-tape – though if it was, why would Wanda want to show it to him?

And then he saw something that made his heart stop. It was John, Johnny-boy, his boyfriend, in his sister's room. Shirtless, flexing his impressive biceps. What was he doing in there?

"Hey, pretty," John said to Wanda.

Pietro flinched. This had to be a joke, right?

"Reckon you were a little kinky this morning," John said to Wanda, and to Pietro's horror he walked straight up to her, pressing his body close. "And I know you were lying when you said y' wouldn't fuck me, Sheila..."

His eyes lingered on her breasts almost comically.

"Get away from me," Wanda hissed. "Believe me; Pietro's going to find out about this."

Anticipating something even nastier, Pietro broke out into a cold sweat.

"But what I really want is _you_," John said. Pietro's hand flew to his mouth like he might be sick. "Now, are y' gonna kiss me?"

John leaned in to Wanda's lips and his hand hovered over her bottom. At that point, however, he was stopped by the click of the front door and Pietro's voice. "Johnny?" Pietro had called. "Get your sweet ass down here, I have ice-cream."

Without another word, John smirked and stalked off downstairs. He looked triumphant, as if he couldn't believe what a fool Pietro was.

And now, Pietro sat on the bed, eyes wide as if he had just watched a horror film. John's words to Wanda rang around his head like a chant: _'what I really want is you'_. All he could see was that moment, that horrible moment where they could have kissed. He didn't understand; he didn't _want _to understand.

"I'm sorry you had to watch that," Wanda said from the window, still not looking at him.

"We had to let you know," Lance explained gently, putting a hand on Pietro's trembling shoulder. "It's been going on for a long time."

Pietro closed his eyes and breathed deeply, inhale-exhale inhale-exhale. When he opened his eyes again, they were a stormy shade of midnight blue and all the colour had gone from his face. In a split-second he was gone, blowing out every one of the candles with the rush of wind.

"Well... that went well," Lance said weakly.


	3. Chapter 3

When Todd and Fred finally came back from their late-night shopping adventure, they found Wanda and Lance in the living room. As usual, the TV was on and neither of them was watching the bland sitcom on the screen. Lance was fiddling distractedly with his guitar, and Wanda was reading Todd's Biology text-book. Since Wanda had received no formal education in the asylum, she wasn't able to go to school like the others. Rather than give up on her education, she was determined to learn as much as she could at home. Naturally, the boys thought this was hilarious.

"Evenin', my beautiful bookworm!" Todd trilled, attempting to plant a slobbery kiss on her cheek. She went to fix him with a death-stare, but the moment she looked at him, her mouth fell open in shock.

Todd grinned. That was the effect Ray said his new look would have on the chicks. And, by the looks of things, Lance was transfixed too by how amazing he and Freddy looked in their new threads. Maybe even jealous.

"Pretty snazzy, huh?" Fred said, striking a pose against the door-frame. Wanda and Lance just blinked.

"What the... what the... what the hell?" Lance eventually said. He couldn't find the words to describe how his team-mates looked... It was certainly different...

Fred's Mohawk was now striped blue and pink and spiked up to ridiculous heights. He was wearing an extremely unforgiving pair of black PVC pants, with a frilly white shirt and a red necktie. All in all, the look gave him the appearance of an extremely overindulged space pirate. Todd's hair had been slicked back from his face, giving him the appearance of a sleazy Mafia Don. He was wearing a pair of stone-coloured slacks_ exactly _like the ones Scott Summers wore, teamed with a checked shirt in vomit-brown and snot-green and an oversized pink silk cravat.

"Nightcrawler and Berzerker gave us a makeover!" Todd beamed, twirling around as if he had been transformed into Brad Pitt. Lance resisted the temptation to laugh – clearly, Blue-Boy and whoever Bazooka was had better senses of humour than he thought.

"You look... unbelievable," Wanda said dryly. Unbelievable in the sense that she couldn't believe Todd could ever look worse than he usually did.

Todd had never been one for sarcasm, so he squealed with delight. "Knew you'd love it, pussycat!" He held up a finger as if he'd suddenly remembered something and brandished an overflowing bag at her. "Bought this for you, yo."

But before Wanda could open the bag, a loud thud and the sound of Pietro in a full screaming rage could be heard from upstairs. Yes, Pietro was back and he'd brought John with him for the longest and loudest argument the Brotherhood had ever endured.

"He's finally found out then," Fred reflected. They heard several objects shattering and all sorts of profanities coming from Maximoff.

"Can we go beat him up?" asked Todd hopefully, eyes lighting up at the thought of exactly where Pyro could stick his lighter.

Though Lance and Wanda looked extremely tempted, they shook their heads.

"Better let Pietro get it all out of his system," Lance said sensibly. When Wanda wasn't looking, he leaned in close to Todd and whispered, "Doesn't mean we can't kick his butt a little on the way out."

...

"You disgusting fucking pig! You vile, shitty whore! You repulsive, sleazy dickstain! You hideous, stupid, slimy bastard!"

As Pietro demonstrated his colourful vocabulary, he flung whatever he could get his hands on at his traitorous boyfriend. Right now, he could string his beloved Johnny up by the balls with no remorse whatsoever. He could impale John-John naked on a flagpole, and Pietro wouldn't care one bit. The only important thing was that he caused some physical damage to the obnoxious Australian.

"Whoa, take it easy," John said as the Complete Works of Shakespeare sailed past his left ear. "C'm'on, don't stress at me!"

"You have no right to tell me what to do," growled Pietro, looking not unlike his father as he glared down at John with menace. Without warning, he exploded into uncontrollable rage, flying at John in a whirlwind of fists and teeth.

"YOU HAD THE MOTHERFUCKING NERVE TO CHEAT, UNDER MY OWN ROOF, WITH MY OWN SISTER!"

Looking bored of being ranted at and not sorry for his actions, John rolled his eyes.

"Don't you even care? Aren't you even sorry?"

"Can't you just shut it, Pete," John yawned. "No, I'm not sorry; I don't really give a shit to be honest. You and your sis, you're so dramatic. Can't you all just chill out?"

This was obviously the wrong thing to say.

"CHILL OUT? CHILL OUT?"

"This is fuckin' stupid, mate, I just wanted to have some fun."

Pietro couldn't believe what a selfish idiot John was being. At the very least, he'd expected an apology, but John didn't think that he'd done anything wrong. He was sure that even in Australia it wasn't acceptable to come on to your boyfriend's sister. He didn't understand what had happened, he only knew that once the raging anger died down, it would hurt.

"YOU USED ME! NOBODY USES ME!" he yelled, throwing John into his wardrobe. The impact brought all his clothes down onto John's head and he sat there buried under mountains of shirts. Pietro tried again. "Don't you have anything to say to me?"

John pulled a pair of turquoise basketball shorts off his head and stood up. "Look, Pete, I like y' heaps. But I don't want this drama, alright?"

How the hell could Johnny 'Flames' Allerdyce stand there and accuse him of creating drama? For once in his life, Pietro had a perfectly good excuse to be OTT and he was _not _going to be told to calm down.

"Drama?" he said in a shaky voice, about to explode again. "You think this is drama? When you started trying to fuck my sister, was _that _drama? Whenever I left the room and you had your hands all over her, was _that_ drama? Or how about you telling me you loved me and making me look the biggest dick on the planet by believing you? Don't you think, Johnny that all this drama comes back to YOU?"

"Aw, c'm'on Pete, we were only fuckin' around."

_Only fuckin' around. _The words were like a faceful of Todd's slime.

"Get out," Pietro said in icy tones. He had inherited his father's way of standing perfectly still and looking down his nose with dangerous contempt. "Get out," he repeated, but when John didn't budge he lost whatever control he had.

"GO!" Pietro screamed, chucking a handful of random possessions at the boy who was definitely his ex now. "Go fuck around with someone else. GO!"

...

As soon as they heard Pietro's door slam shut, the Brotherhood boys leapt into the hall to do Pyro some additional damage. Lance jumped in front of the door so that John couldn't leave, and glowering at him under dark eyebrows.

"Going so soon?" Fred snarled, cracking his knuckles and looking hungrily at the boy as if he was a juicy meatball sub. Even with his bizarre makeover and muffin-topping spilling over PVC pants, he managed to look terrifying without really trying.

"Let us give you a leavin' present first," Todd said, and his tongue shot out to grab Pyro's beloved lighter. Without it the fire-manipulator was useless and his grey eyes widened with fear of what was to come next.

"Courtesy of the Brotherhood," Lance added and kneed Pyro hard in the groin without further ado. Watching the scumball writhe in agony on the filthy doormat was deeply satisfying, and watching him recoil from one of Fred's mega-punches was even better.

"Jesus Christ!" John moaned, trying to get to his feet. Lance created a small tremor that shook John painfully to the ground again.

"I don't think you should fuck around with my team again," growled Lance. "Do you?"

John stared up at the boy who had kneed him in the balls. He knew when he was beaten. The massive dude was scary enough, but without his lighter he didn't stand a chance against someone as vicious as Alvers.

"No," he said. "I'll go. Can I have me lighter?"

Fred turned to Todd. "What do you think, Todd?"

Todd's winked a yellow eye. "Oh, he can have it yo."

Before John knew what was happening, his hair was on fire and he was dropkicked out of the house. The boys watched him leave, trying to run and put out his hair at the same time, then tripping over and cursing loudly as if it was the ground's fault.

"Yes!" Todd high-fived Lance and Fred and strolled back into the living room where Wanda was still reading her book and looking extremely unimpressed.

"We got 'im good, sugarlumps," he said as he hopped onto the arm of her chair looking pleased with himself. "Don't you worry; he ain't showin' his sorry ass round here no more."

Wanda pretended she hadn't heard and flicked the pages of her book.

Todd noticed the unopened bag sitting by her chair. "Don't you wanna see your surprise, honeybuns?"

She arched a black eyebrow suspiciously. Knowing Todd, all manner of gross things could be inside that bag. Probably a collection of toenails and pubic hair or something.

"C'm'on," he wheedled, shoving the bag under her nose again. "Just a few little gifts for you, every girl likes presents, huh?"

Wanda rolled her eyes and tentatively opened the bag as if some kind of disgusting creature might leap out at her. Her heart sank as she saw the candy and the roses; this was typical of Todd and his romantic advances. They were beautiful black roses, however, and she knew that they didn't come cheap. How could the little slug afford this?

She pulled out the stuffed black cat and instinctively cradled it like a little girl before she remembered what a badass she was supposed to be. She couldn't help smiling, however.

"Every witch needs a cat," Todd said.

"Thank you," she said with some difficulty. She couldn't work out why the gesture got to her so much. It was just as ordinary for hopeful boys to buy you stuffed animals as it was candy or flowers, but the cat meant a lot to her. She hadn't really thought anybody would see her as somebody who'd like something cute and fluffy.

"And..." Todd said grandly, pulling out an envelope from behind his back. Her eyes, which were now lined with smudgy black kohl, almost popped out of her head as she looked inside it.

"Tickets to BlackThrash? But T-Toad, how could you -?"

Todd tapped the side of his nose to indicate that he had ways and means of affording those tickets. Wanda thought that, added to the slicked back hair, he looked more like a mobster than ever.

"Don't worry your gothy little head about that, yo."

"But Todd, this is really -"

"Nice?" He looked at her hopefully. "I just wanna make you happy, Wanda. You deserve it, y'know?"

And even though it was suspicious, even though Todd was creepier than ever, Wanda glowed inside at the thought that somebody out there thought that she deserved these things.


	4. Chapter 4

Lance lay on the doormat, attempting to fix the hinges on the door. After the incident with Pyro, the door had become sticky and refused to shut. It had taken many years of strain, many slammings and people being thrown into or out of it, so it was no surprise that the hinges had finally given in. Unfortunately, Lance was no great handyman, and he had managed to half-unscrew the door rather than fix it.

He swore for the twentieth time as another screw flew out of the door. Then a white blur rushed past him and out of the door, speeding around the house and into the garden.

A platform-booted foot appeared by Lance's nose. "Pietro," said the owner of the boot, and Lance looked up to see Wanda.

"I'd better see if he's okay," she said, though she looked extremely reluctant to deal with a fragile and hysterical brother right now.

Lance jumped up and brushed himself off. "Maybe I should," he said, looking out into the night. Then he looked back at Wanda with concern in his brown eyes. "He might be upset with you about the whole John thing. You could make it worse right now, you know?"

Wanda thought she could read something else in Lance's amber eyes, but she chose to ignore it. She made a polite gesture for Lance to go and face Pietro at his worst, if he so desired.

"Good luck," she called after him. "Hell hath no fury like a Maximoff scorned..."

Lance was surprised that Wanda had yielded so easily to him. The Wanda he knew would push him out of the way and remind him exactly whose twin Pietro was. Despite their differences, they were fiercely protective of each other and really, he thought John must've had a death-wish to come between them.

He made his way to the garden, which was ironically named since there wasn't a plant in sight. It was a death-trap of junk, piled up with old TVs and splintered bits of wood and mountains of litter. As Lance walked the short distance, he wondered why _he_ wanted to look after Maximoff so badly. Of course he wanted Pietro to be okay, and not to smash up the house, or to hurt himself or anyone else.

What he ignored was the ridiculous impulse in his heart that was making him almost dizzy with longing. He rounded the corner of the house and came upon the garden, stepping straight into a pile of soggy pizza boxes.

There he saw Pietro, throwing his every effort into trying to run up the wall. For almost a month he had been attempting it, and falling on his backside as he always did only made him more determined.

"Fuck you, wall!" he shouted from the ground as it thwarted him once again. He immediately got up and tried again, running at the wall in a white blur, bouncing off it in a tangle of white Converse and red sweatpants. "Fuck you!"

So he tried again and again and again, each time landing flat on his back. Lance had to admire the steely determination that Pietro had probably inherited from his father, though it was painfully transparent why Pietro was pushing himself so hard. As any boy would tell you, physical pain was definitely preferable to emotional pain.

Pietro hit the wall again and landed with an eruption of curses. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and Lance could see his ribs heaving as he struggled for breath. If this continued, and Pietro showed no sign of stopping, he could end up hurting himself. Though Lance suspected that Pietro wanted to hurt himself, as the pale boy got up and tugged at his sweatpants, about to run again.

"Hey!" Lance interrupted. Pietro whipped his head round to see who had spoken.

"Tryin' to run up the wall again, huh?" Lance observed, trying to sound casual.

Pietro shoved his sweat-soaked hair out of his face and glared at Lance. "Have you come to say 'I told you so'?"

"No," Lance said quickly, though he_ had_ told him so on many occasions. He watched Pietro's ghostly-pale chest fluttering, transfixed. He was trying not to notice those smooth toned arms and the lithe, defined torso. It really wasn't the time for that.

"Whatever."

Pietro moved to run up the wall again, but Lance caught his wrist effortlessly. "I really don't want you to break your ass, P."

As if the wall was still calling him, Pietro's eyes drifted towards it. "I will do it, you know. Run up walls. I'll learn. One day I'll get it."

"Sure you will." Lance patted Pietro's cold shoulder in a friendly way. When he was sure that Pietro wasn't going to take another running leap at the wall, he let him go. "So... Are you okay?"

Pietro scoffed in response to the question.

"You told me so. You told me he was trouble," Pietro grumbled, now leaning against the wall with his arms folded. "You all did. Shoulda listened, shouldn't I?"

Tempted to agree, Lance bit his tongue.

"How long has John been doing this?" demanded Pietro suddenly, his eyes so narrow that they were almost shut.

"Since you started dating..." mumbled Lance, a blush spreading furiously across his nose.

"And none of you ever thought to tell me that my boyfriend was crushing on my _sister?_"

"You wouldn't have believed us, P. You were fucking _obsessed _with him."

There was a moment of silence. Lance's comment was more tactless than he had intended it to be.

"Sorry," he winced, as Pietro's eyes watered like he had been slapped.

"I do not need your sympathy," Pietro spat, his face hardening back into a scowl.

Lance plunged his hands into his pockets, at a loss for what to say next. He thought that Pietro must be cold without a shirt.

"Do you want my jacket?"

"No."

Maybe Pietro would be better off with his sister.

"Are you angry at Wanda?" Lance tried.

Blue eyes met his stonily. "No."

"It wasn't her fault, you know. Do you wanna see her?"

"I don't want to see anybody, Alvers." Here, Pietro lost his bravado and a sad little smile betrayed him. He turned away and a cloud passed in front of the moon; for a second, he disappeared into the darkness.

Pietro frowned and wiped a hand across his eyes angrily. "I'm such a dick."

And even though Lance agreed at the best of times, he shook his head.

"No, I am a dick," Pietro insisted. "Look at me, getting all emo over some _jerk._ How was I so stupid? How come I didn't realise what was going on? I feel like the world's biggest idiot right now – he shat all over me and he's not even sorry."

Assuming that Pyro shitting all over Pietro was purely metaphorical, Lance felt another stab of guilt. He looked at his friend trembling with anger that was not for his cheating boyfriend but directed towards himself.

"You didn't deserve it, Pietro," he said softly, taking a step closer. Pietro winced at his words.

"Of course I fucking did."

"No, you didn't," Lance said. Pietro opened his mouth to argue, but Lance silenced him. "That's why we showed you the video – we had to stop it. You don't deserve to get hurt P, don't be stupid."

"But I am stupid," was Pietro's muffled answer. He had sat down on a cold cement step and buried his face in his hands. _Don't be crying, _Lance willed. Anger he could deal with, but not tears.

"Did you feel like this when Kitty dumped you?" the muffled voice asked after a brief silence. Lance sighed at the memory and sat down next to Pietro.

"Like what?"

"Like somebody carved 'Loser' into your heart with a rusty blade."

Lance chuckled bitterly at Pietro's image. When Kitty dumped him, the overriding feeling had been that of being a loser. Pietro had been such a good friend that night, speeding out at midnight to steal beer for him. He didn't know how to help somebody like Maximoff, whose moods changed as quickly as he could run.

"It gets better," he reassured Pietro. "You'll be over it in no time, man."

It began to rain lightly, covering their skin in cool spray.

"I don't like having... feelings," Pietro concluded after a long time.

If anybody else had said this, it may have come across weird or even slightly crazy. For Pietro, however, it made perfect sense. This was the kid who slept around to avoid rejection, who laughed at sad moments in films, who never opened his birthday cards.

In fact, Pietro hated having feelings so much that he decided to change the subject.

"Hey, how's your shoulder?"

Lance welcomed the change of subject, however transparent it was. He pulled his shirt off to show Pietro the wound. The swelling had gone down, though it was clear that when the stitches came out there'd be an ugly scar.

"You did a good job," he smiled. "Thanks, Pietro."

Pietro shrugged jerkily. Clearly, the cold and the rain were beginning to get to him. "You saved my life, I saved yours. It's cool."

He drummed his fingers on his knees, drumming quicker and quicker until his fingers were a blur. Then he stopped immediately and fixed a very intense stare on Lance.

"Why'd you do it, huh? Why'd you take that spike for me?"

_Crap._ Lance fiddled with his shoelace, wondering what to say. Because you're pretty? Because you were too busy thinking about John's _boomerang_ to notice that spike coming at you? Because I can't wait to die like everybody else? Or why not just go the whole shebang and admit the horrible truth that he thought he might...

"Don't know," he shrugged. Damn, it was cold. "Acted on impulse. We're the Brotherhood, we look out for each other. You'd do the same for me, right?"

They both knew that this wasn't true. Pietro looked out for number one, and if he was going to save anybody in the world it wouldn't be Lance 'Eighties Hair McLoser' Alvers.

"Well, let's see," Pietro said, a wry smile appearing on his lips. "I ran you home and by the way, Alvers, we should rename you Blob 2 for being so fucking heavy. I've got your bloodstains all over my suit - if there's a battle tonight I'll have to fight in my _boxers_. I spent an hour stitching that gaping hole in your shoulder up because you were stupid enough to take a spike for the fastest guy in the universe. And then... you set up a camera to film my boyfriend hitting on my sister and somehow I haven't kicked your brains out."

It was just like Pietro to disguise the positive in a rolling list of negatives. Lance knew him well enough to know that what Pietro was really saying was 'I wouldn't have done all that if I didn't like you.'

Just when Lance thought that everything would be fine, Pietro kicked at something on the ground and unearthed a Fosters bottle-cap. Fosters, the vile Australian lager that John drank religiously. Instantly, Pietro's pale face clouded over and he threw the bottle-cap away from him as hard as he could. Breathing hard, he pushed his dripping hair out of his face and tried to calm down. Lance eyed him cautiously, and those sensitive brown eyes sent a new wave of anger rippling through Pietro.

"This is your fault," Pietro said, his voice laced with bitterness. "You said I should trust people and find someone who -"

He couldn't bring himself to finish that sentence, it was too humiliating. John hadn't loved him at all, whatever he'd said. Lance should be doing the I-Told-You-So victory dance by now, never mind saying it.

"I know I told you to be with somebody," Lance sighed. "But I didn't mean _him_." It was out before he realised he'd said it; his cheeks burned as he refused to meet that cold blue gaze.

"Then who did you mean?" ordered Pietro, throwing his arms wide. "Who should I have trusted, huh? Who could possibly lov- _like_ me?" He looked desperate now, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his eyes blazed with emotion. For a second, brown eyes met blue, locked in a gaze which wrenched the heart. And then Lance looked away, as quickly as the moment had passed.

"It's – not important," said Lance heavily, kicking a stone into the distance. "The point is Pyro was an asshole. I'm sorry he screwed you over, I'm sorry if you had feelings for that jerk, I'm sorry, okay?"

"Okay," Pietro said numbly, though it wasn't. He wanted Lance to go away now. "I need to see Wanda," he said in a stiff little voice.

Luckily, Lance picked up on the please-leave vibes and rose swiftly. "I'll get her for you, man. And Pietro, if you need anything -"

"Just get Wanda," Pietro repeated. The raindrops were catching the dull moonlight on Lance's brow, and he stared down at Pietro looking more intense than ever. "Please," Pietro begged, and with a defeated shrug, Lance went.

...

"She totally dug your gifts," said Fred thickly, his mouth stuffed with chocolate hearts.

"So do you, by the look of things," muttered Todd. Wanda had given in and let Fred have one of her boxes of candy, and now she had taken one outside for poor Speedy. Who knew that she was such a Samaritan?

"I thought you were happy with her reaction?" Fred peered over a pair of red heart-shaped sunglasses that Kurt had insisted were 'so you!'

"I am, yo," Todd sighed, cupping his grimy face in his palm. "It's just... how much stuff am I gonna have to buy her before she's mine?"

Fred unwrapped another chocolate. "Maybe she's not a material girl?"

Todd thought about this for a second. "Naw, she totally dug the gifts. 'Specially the tickets. Aint never seen her smile like that, y'know?"

"Well, maybe it's your cool new look too," Fred suggested kindly. Now he was on the last chocolate, and he intended to savour it.

"You think?" Todd arched an eyebrow. "Yeah, our new threads are cool, I guess. Lance and Wanda were pretty shocked, huh?"

"Wait 'til Pietro sees us!" Fred grinned, sucking the last of the chocolate off his porky fingertip. If anybody knew about fashion, it was Pietro Maximoff. Fred was pretty sure Pietro would be sick with envy when he saw their revolutionary new looks.

"Uh-huh," Todd ran a hand through his new oil-slick hair and grinned to reveal shark-like yellow teeth. "Move over, Maximoff, the House of Bros has got some new hot-stuff!"

...

"Look, I'm sorry," Wanda said for the hundredth time, throwing a sweatshirt at Pietro before he could argue again. She'd _dress_ him if she had to.

"Will you stop apologising?" Pietro yelled. He scowled at the oversized black sweatshirt as if it was the source of his frustration. Wanda threw him a dangerous look and he found himself obediently putting on the offending hoodie.

"I just wish you told me," Pietro muttered, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve. "The way he treated you... it's disgusting, it makes me sick."

Wanda's lip trembled and she fiercely wiped at her eyes. How could Pietro feel sorry for her? He should hate her.

"He treated you like crap too," Wanda said, though she was sure that her brother didn't need to be reminded of this fact. "Sometimes, even when you were in the same room, he'd try it..."

They both shuddered.

"You should've told me, Wand," Pietro sighed, staring out into an invisible horizon.

Wanda just shook her head, lowering her smudged black eyes. "You wouldn't have believed me. He messed with your head, Pietro; you wouldn't hear a word against him. It was like that with..." her mouth twitched as if she couldn't say the word. "It was the same with father."

Her words were painful. He knew it was true. Those few people that he trusted, admired or loved possessed him entirely. He gave them too much of himself, while he gave others nothing.

"Lance was right," Wanda continued. "The only way we could get you to believe it was to show you. I know it was cruel."

"Damn right it was. The candid camera," Pietro laughed humourlessly. "You, dressed like a whore."

Wanda chose to ignore the whore comment. "I know," she soothed. "But now you've seen what he was like. He's gone now. He can't hurt us anymore."

Pietro struggled to keep his speech at normal speed. "It's just... how dare he come on to you. Look at you, you're so tough - how could he treat you like trash? And he made a bona fide fool out of me." Pietro spat on the ground in disgust. "Jerk."

"He's gone now," Wanda repeated. Then the moon glinted in her eyes, and she let a grin play on her lips. "Want to know how he went?"

Although she hadn't been particularly impressed by the boys' bloodthirsty attitude, she thought it might help Pietro to know that his scumbag of a boyfriend ran screaming aflame from their house.

Pietro arched an eyebrow suspiciously. "You didn't hex him, did you?"

Wanda rolled her eyes. "No, though the temptation was strong, little brother. Your friends gave him a good kicking on the way out."

"Really?"

"Oh yes," Wanda said indulgently. "They beat him up, Todd stole his lighter and then when he asked for it back, they set his hair on fire."

The ghost of a smile appeared across Pietro's face. John meticulously styled his hair to look like flames; now his dream had come true, courtesy of his best friends. But John had suffered only a fraction of the pain he was feeling.

"He's gone now," Wanda repeated for the third time with a hint of 'good riddance' in her voice. "And he won't come back."

But what should be comforting to Pietro only made his heart feel like somebody had twanged an elastic band at it. John was never coming back. It was over, gone before the fat lady could even warm up her vocal chords.


	5. Chapter 5

Morning broke, and nobody surfaced.

Last night had been emotional, to say the least.

Pietro had avoided sleep. Wanda experienced a multitude of emotions that kept her up all night, ranging from a bloodthirsty desire to castrate John to giddy excitement about the BlackThrash concert. Lance had not been able to close his eyes without visions of Pietro swimming into mind; the way that the moonlight glowed upon Pietro's sculpted shoulder-blades, how strange it was to see the almighty Quicksilver looking like a scared little boy. Meanwhile, Todd had kept Fred awake all night reciting a beatboxed list of all the things he could buy for Wanda to keep her sweet. Fred had finally given in and told Todd none too politely that the greatest thing he could give Wanda was silence, and moved his gigantic form into the armchair downstairs for an uninterrupted nap.

At one thirty in the afternoon, Pietro finally dragged himself out of the bed that still smelt of John the bastard. He was intermittently confused, livid, horrified, ashamed, depressed and lonely; aching with loss but disgusted with himself for feeling so pathetic. At times like this, Pietro was his own worst enemy as he struggled to keep up with his raging emotions. What he needed was a stupid distraction like ludicrous hip-hop booty dancing with Todd or turning the TV on mute with Fred to do the voices on soap operas. Or perhaps he would paint up his face like a goth and pretend to be Wanda.

He didn't want to see Lance. Lance made things very... intense. He didn't like to act like a dork (though he frequently did, just not by choice.) And last night, things had been weird with Lance _again_.

Unfortunately for Pietro, the minute he left his room, he collided with the very person he wished to avoid. Lance, who was carrying a mug of strong coffee, yelped like a particularly large Chihuahua as the liquid slopped down his front.

Pietro snickered inwardly at Lance's reaction. "Sorry," he said, sounding none too sincere.

"Way to wake me up," grumbled Lance, running a hand through his mega-frizzed bedhead.

"Seems like I should be the bitchy one this morning," remarked Pietro, giving a fraction of a smirk. "As it is, I'm remarkably chipper."

Lance cleared the fuzzy just-woke-up feeling in his throat. He felt ridiculous standing there in his threadbare tartan boxer shorts and Pearl Jam tee-shirt with a hole in the 'a' of Jam. Pietro, of course, looked like he'd just stepped off the cover of Vogue.

As predicted, there was an awkward silence. Pietro bounced on his toes, eager to move away. Lance cleared his throat again. Wanda came out of her room, peered suspiciously at Lance and promptly went back inside.

"So... Uh... Are you okay?" Lance asked. Pietro, who had been counting the greenish rosebuds on the mouldy wallpaper, blinked distractedly.

"Yeah, yeah, fine," Pietro said swiftly. Then, because he was annoyed that Lance wanted to drag all that up again, he adopted his trademark Scowl of Disdain. "I'm _Quick_silver, my mind works ten times the speed of you idiots' brains. I'm already over it."

With a particularly snooty scoff, Pietro whizzed off with his nose in the air.

"Fuckin' great," Lance muttered to himself. Pietro had gone back to his old ways of sneering at anything that moved and wearing a smirk to rival The Joker. Dicksilver was back.

...

Wanda tapped a newly painted midnight blue nail. Once her nails were dry, she would go through every item of clothing she wore to find something suitably gothic for the BlackThrash concert.

For the first time in her life, she was excited. Well, she had felt excitement before but that was the kind of thrill that precedes exerting an abnormal amount of violence. She still couldn't believe that anybody would want to take her anywhere, let alone the concert of her all-time favourite band. Alright, so the person taking her was slimy, stinky, sleazy Todd. She could always lose him in the mosh-pit.

Much as she was disgusted by Todd, she couldn't face asking him if she could go to the concert with one of her fellow goths. It was really sweet of little Froggy to buy her those tickets – it was the most she could do to let him have her company for the evening. Besides, going to a concert together wasn't like a _date. _They wouldn't be able to see, hear (or hopefully smell) each other in a crowd of raving teen goths.

Poor Todd. He wasn't likely to enjoy the concert. The most intense song that Todd listened to was Baby Got Back- how would he cope with the howling throes of Velvet Orgasmia? Not only that, but Todd would look completely alien in his clothes that were all the colour of bodily fluids from earwax to crusty-scab. If she had to have Todd beside her during the best gig of her life, he would need one hell of a makeover. And not a comedy makeover like yesterday – a dead serious, so good it was scary, über-gothic transformation.

She imagined a caterpillar Todd wrapped up in a big, stinky cocoon; emerging majestically with bat-wings. Just as she was pondering whether Todd would agree to wearing an underbust corset, somebody knocked on her door. She knew that it wasn't Pietro, because Pietro rarely knocked and always made himself heard in some highly irritating way. She recognised the knock instantly – Todd's 'secret' knock for her that probably spelled 'BABYCAKES' or something equally moronic in Morse Code.

"Let the transformation begin," Wanda said to herself, with a smirk to rival her brother's. Things were about to get very interesting.

...

There was no other word for it. It was a motherfucker.

Lance didn't have the gift of eloquence, but he knew that his feelings for Pietro were completely and utterly unwarranted. He didn't ask to be attracted to the neurotic, irrational, deliberately obtuse speedster. Maximoff was bash-your-head-against-a-brick-wall complicated; Lance couldn't begin to work him out. He kept dwelling on that moment last night when Pietro asked him who he should have fallen for, the powerful look they had shared as if Pietro _knew_... But what did Lance know – he was only reading what he wanted to read into it.

God, he was so full of angst. He was annoying himself with these thoughts, these constant thoughts about Pietro Maximoff. There was no point sitting here attempting to write an essay about Iago's manipulation in Othello when he hadn't even read it. Every word he read only morphed into Pietro anyway – Othell_o_, Iag_o_, Rodrig_o_, Pietr_o_.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. He had it bad.

He went downstairs to numb his poor brain with television. As predicted, Fred's bottom was sagging over the side of the armchair like an over-risen muffin and his eyes were glued to some Mexican game-show. Fred was still wearing the flamboyant dress shirt from yesterday's makeover but he had teamed it with his traditional dungarees, giving him the look of a fruity farmer.

Lance threw himself onto the antique couch, demonstrating his lack of vocabulary when a rogue spring poked him hard in the backside. Fred greeted him with something in between a snort, a sniff and a grunt and Lance made a similar noise back. Wanda often observed that living with adolescent boys was not unlike being in the Stone Age.

As the contestants chased a man in a dolphin suit around the stage to La Bamba, somebody began to sing along in perfect Spanish from the corner of the room. Fred didn't even turn his head, but Lance looked up to see Pietro immersed in sewing something black and frilly.

"You speak Spanish?" Lance blinked at his team-mate. Was there nothing the boy couldn't do?

"Si," Pietro replied predictably. "It's another amazing trait of my super-speed. I pick up languages like this," he snapped his fingers to demonstrate how quick and easy it was. "Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Panjabi; you name it, I got it."

"Pietro translates that Polish soap Przepraszam for me," Fred said proudly. He turned to Pietro with an idiotic grin on his face. "Did I say that right?"

"Sure you did, sure you did," Pietro said, cutting a long strip of black PVC and holding it up to the light to inspect it.

Lance frowned at Pietro's handiwork. "New battle-suit for Wanda?"

"Actually, no," Pietro said, eyes glittering with the prospect of juicy gossip. "This is for Todd."

This got the desired effect from Lance, who dropped the slice of pizza he had just picked up face down on the rug. "Todd?"

"He bought Wanda tickets to see some goth band, BadThrush or something," explained Fred, picking the pizza off the floor and eating it without a second thought. "He has to dress up like a goth so Pietro's making him an outfit out of Wanda's old stuff."

"How the hell did Todd afford those tickets?" demanded Lance, who found it hard to believe that Todd could buy Wanda anything more than a toothpick given the Brotherhood's desperate financial situation.

"Stole the money," said Fred, without missing a beat. Surprisingly, this would not arouse suspicion – Todd's penchant for pickpocketing was not only accepted but actively encouraged by the boys.

Lance gave a nonchalant shrug and turned to Pietro, who was altering the crotch of his sister's trousers for Todd. His face formed a grimace of disgust at the thought of having to make room for Todd Junior.

"And why the hell are you doing Todd a favour so he can attempt to get your sister into bed?" asked Lance.

Pietro's grimace turned instantly to a smirk. "The key word is 'attempt,' Alvers. He could buy Wanda the Solar System and she wouldn't go near him. Besides," he added, dropping his voice to soft sing-song. "Sewing takes the pain away."

"So you _are_ still upset about John!" exclaimed Fred with all the tact of a pencil.

"Ix-nay on the Ohn-jay," warned Lance out of the side of his mouth. Maximoff was so volatile, and he had a variety of sharp objects at hand.

"Whut?" gurned Fred.

But before Fred could begin to decipher Pig-Latin and before Pietro could so much as tingle with anger, the front door burst right off its poor hinges again with loud bang and an irate blue woman announced her presence with an ear-splitting shriek of "What the HELL have you done THIS TIME?"


	6. Chapter 6

"Well, my vicious little hellcat, how do I look?"

Todd spun around once, twice and three times in the dingy candlelight of Wanda's bedroom. Wanda, who had just put in silver contact lenses, nearly blinked them out again when she saw the transformed toad-boy.

Talk about kissing a frog and getting a... A slightly less weird-looking creature.

If Pietro wasn't being severely berated by Mystique, Wanda would have hugged all the irritating breath out of him. He hadn't just made a gothic outfit; he'd made a gothic outfit that made even _Todd _look decent. Everything was cut to flatter Todd's lanky teenage frame, and artfully stiffened so Tolensky was forced to stand upright rather than his usual squat. As the clothes were new and hadn't been worn about six-hundred times before washing, Todd didn't even smell that bad.

And somehow, Todd looked less bizarre in the theatrical outfit than he did in his usual drab, shapeless clothes. As well as Wanda's altered PVC trousers that tapered in around Todd's skinny ankles, Todd was wearing a black Victorian dress-shirt with ruffles down the neckline; one of Pietro's old suit jackets customised with black velvet lapels; Converse hi-tops which Pietro had sprayed with black shiny paint and then added an ornate flock pattern with silver pen; and a black top-hat to conceal his greasy hair.

"You look very convincing," Wanda said politely, giving Todd a rare smile. It was true – unlike her, Todd didn't need white make-up to make him look necro-sexy. He had his own greenish pallor that brought a whole new dimension to freakshow cool.

"To tell the truth, Frogwart, I'm rather jealous," she added, and for once let him crush her in one of his flailing, squeezing hugs of delight.

"Yo, Witchypoos! This is the best moment of my entire life ever! Even better than the time I shot slime outta my nose!"

While Todd might have looked the part, he had a long way to go before he could act it.

Wanda cleared her throat and began a detailed debrief of almost military precision, listing the ins and outs of classic goth behaviour. There would be no hopping. There would be no pet-names. And there would certainly, definitely be no beatboxing.

...

Pietro paced around his bedroom, sitting down occasionally only to jump straight back up again as if each surface he touched was on fire.

Fire. Fire fire fire fire fire fire. Everything reminded him of fire, and fire inevitably reminded him of He Whose Name We Shall Not Speak. He had given such a good performance of being over John-John today that even _he_ had been convinced. Now there were no distractions, he was ready to gnaw off his own legs to stop himself from thinking about the blunder from Down Under.

He had four half-moon shaped marks in his wrist where Mystique had grabbed him with her formidable talons and demanded the truth. Like the brazen curtain-twitcher she was, she'd witnessed Pyro's explosive eviction from the bonnet of Lance's jeep, cunningly disguised as a moth.

"Fraternising with the enemy is a dangerous game," she had hissed in a tone so icy it could have sunk the Titanic. "_Sodomising _with the enemy is unforgivable."

Looking back, Pietro had to admit that was a witty line. The situation, however, was far from amusing. If Mystique knew about him and the Acolyte, there was very little stopping her from telling his father. In fact, the only thing stopping her from telling Papa Buckethead about his son's dubious sexual orientation was the fact that Pietro had actually _begged_ her not to and offered to do_ anything_ she wished. Now Mystique had him just where she wanted him - to put it bluntly, she had him by the balls.

Before Mystique showed up, he was fine. His mind was clear of all things Pyro. Mystique's none-too-polite reminder of his "sordid fumble" with "your father's asswiper" had reminded him of everything he was trying to ignore. To use a sewing metaphor, she'd managed to unpick every single stitch he'd made towards moving on.

And now he had nothing to do to distract himself. His reign as Fairy Godmother had ended. Like an alternative, odorous Cinderella, Todd had gone to the ball. Wanda had gone too, and Pietro would bet his sweet toned posterior that they were having a disgustingly good time. Of course, Wanda would be enjoying the music and Todd would be enjoying Wanda, but that was neither here nor there. The point was, they were having fun and he was not.

A dangerous feeling descended over him in a stifling mist. He was lonely, and he needed somebody anybody, to take it away.

He would go out. Maybe drink. Meet somebody who he didn't have to remember. Fuck it; he'd already tarnished his reputation anyway.

Yes, it was a dangerous feeling that descended over Pietro.

...

At 9PM, somebody knocked on the door much more hesitantly than the irate Mystique had. Fred, who was struggling to understand Przepraszam without Pietro's translation, feebly yelled for Lance.

"There's someone at the door, Lance!"

Lance looked up from his guitar in the smoky confinement of his bedroom, and grunted a response.

"There's someone at the door, P."

Pietro sighed loudly from his own bedroom and shouted, rather irritably, "There's someone at the DOOR, Lance!"

Somebody banged on the ceiling from upstairs, and Lance could be heard announcing,"Someone at the door, Fred!"

"There's someone at the door... Fred," Fred tailed off, hauling his large frame out of the armchair to answer the door.

Thankfully, it was not Mystique again. It was Kurt Wagner and Ray, who looked politely repulsed by the state (and stench) of the Brotherhood Boarding House. Fred made a clumsy gesture for them to come in, swooping an arm in the general direction of the living room. He watched the boys frown as they wondered whether it was better to stand on the hairy, infested rug or to sit on the grubby, overstuffed couch.

"Thank you," said Kurt, displaying perfect European manners. "Where's Toad?"

"Out somewhere," shrugged Fred. "Do you wanna talk to him about the mon – uh, the you-know-what?"

Kurt's eyes darted left and right. "Yes," he said abruptly. "I'll be quick. Basically, the Professor wants to compensate you for -"

"Uh, I'm not good at remembering stuff," Fred warned. "You better write it down..." He nodded towards a sticky notepad and a well-chewed Biro, which Ray took up with reluctance.

Kurt found himself wondering if Freddy could even read, but swallowed the thought. He looked nervously at Ray, who opened the notepad, tore off a sheet that said 'Lance suks hairy ballz' and gestured that he was ready to write.

"As I was saying, uh... Blob, the Professor wants to give you compensation for that spike Lance took. Apparently he was hurt quite badly. We have a cheque here for a thousand dollars."

In the past, Fred would have gone into cardiac arrest at the mention of a mere hundred dollars. Now that he was loaded, a thousand dollars was as ordinary as nose-picking. "Go on," Fred waved like an important business-man.

"We thought that you could use the Prof's compensation as excuse for suddenly being loaded... You know, in case anybody gets suspicious," suggested Kurt, who had just noticed how out of place anything worth more than five bucks would look in this run-down hovel.

"I see," said Fred, who didn't really see. "So do we actually get this com – uh, this money?"

But just as Fred was about to find out, a white blur announced its presence in the living room.

"I'm going out," it said, revealing itself to be Pietro in scandalously tight black jeans. Pietro's blue eyes widened when he realised that they had guests, more specifically, X- guests.

"Why in the name of all things mutated are there X-Men in my house?"

"Business," Kurt and Fred said at once.

Pietro raised an eyebrow, but his father had taught him not to ask questions when 'business' was mentioned.

"Business," he repeated boredly. He grinned wickedly at Kurt, who avoided his mocking gaze. "Don't shit yourself, Blue, I'm smart enough to know that 'business' means 'none of your business.'"

Then Pietro's eyes fell on the electric mutant that he had only recently come across. "Who the hell are you?"

He'd noticed on the battlefield that Ray looked a little more eccentric than the others. Ray had very short hair, in fact it was only blondish stubble save for a spiked red fringe. Now, Pietro could see that Ray had lots of piercings, at least five in each ear and one under his bottom lip. He wore tight bleached jeans with a neon Mickey Mouse tee-shirt and a leather jacket. All in all, it wasn't the usual preppy X-look.

"Ray," said Ray pleasantly. He had a soft voice with gravelly tones, making him instantly likeable. "The electric dude. And you're the fast guy. So, where are you goin' tonight?"

It was unheard of for an X-Man to make conversation with any member of the Broterhood. Pietro was so taken aback by Ray's politeness that he was rendered incapable of any witty comeback. In fact, he found himself answering truthfully. "Metros."

Metros was probably the worst bar in Bayville. Its only merit was that they didn't ID, unfortunately that meant that it was full of drugged-up old perverts.

"Man," Ray laughed. "Ever been to Scorch? Scorch is my life!"

Despite himself, Pietro's eyes widened with admiration. "Scorch? Man, that place is over 21s... How the hell do you get in there?"

Ray winked a vibrant green eye at Pietro. "X-Men don't always play by the rules, you know. I go through the back entrance, mess with the electric system a little...So how about it? You wanna make trouble with me in Scorch?"

Scorch... Pietro had walked past it plenty of times to know that like Ray, it was pretty alternative. People that went to Scorch liked glow-sticks and techno music and dancing 'til dawn. 'I could like those things,' thought Pietro vaguely, thinking that he could also like Ray.

"Trouble, huh? How can I resist," Pietro smirked, looking at Ray under dark lashes. Poor Ray had no idea what he was getting himself into. "Lead the way, Ray-Ray!"

Ray looked back at a glaring Kurt with a helpless shrug as Pietro lightly pushed him toward the front door.

"Unbelievable!" Kurt exploded when they were gone. "Can you believe those two?"

Fred just sighed, shaking his head at Kurt.

"Ray's dead meat," he said

...

Fred was dreaming. His large, blubbery pink lips wavered in a low rumbling snore, tongue occasionally darting out to savour the delights that swam through his mind. A rack of ribs... A life-size ice-cream sculpture of Jean Grey, dripping erotically... Cheese bubbling on top of a plate of nachos... Little flecks of sugar of top of a perfectly baked, cinnamon scented –

"FREDDY! FREDD-EEEEEE!" a voice cried out, disturbing Fred from his sleep with a massive jolt and a warthog-like snort. There, perched on the corner of his bed, was an extremely buzzing Todd.

"I might be having a heart attack," gasped Fred, clutching his chest. He squinted at Todd through bleary eyes, wondering why Todd was dressed as an undertaker. "Did you go to Scorch too?"

"Scorch?" Todd scoffed. "No, yo, Scorch is vanilla compared to where I went!"

"Oh, the concert," Fred said thickly through a yawn.

Todd, who did not share Fred's tiredness, bounced happily on the end of the bed. "Aw man, Freddy, it was so sweet, all these goth chicks getting damn near naked! And the music wasn't so bad, I reckon I could get into thrash-metal, y'know. But the best part? Nobody thought I was weird!"

"Wow," Fred offered. That was a pretty big achievement for Todd, after all. "Did Wanda have a good time?"

"The best," Todd sighed dreamily. "She totally digs me when I'm a goth, we talked all the way home! I reckon a beautiful friendship is brewin', yo... And then, who knows what?"

Fred scratched his chin thoughtfully. "You gonna stay a goth, then?"

Todd flung his arms out theatrically, and declared. "Freddy, my boy, I AM a goth!"

...

Stupid Jeep. Stupid, bastard Jeep. Stupid, bastard, hunk-of-junk Jeep.

It was 3.30AM, and Lance was taking his anger out on the aforementioned Jeep. The dent hadn't been that bad when he'd started hammering it out, but now it was bigger and deeper than ever.

Todd and Wanda had got home at 2AM, chattering excitedly about Phoe Pigalle, the corseted lead singer of BlackThrash. Lance didn't care so much about them having fun, it was about time Wanda started to enjoy herself.

No, that wasn't the source of his rage.

He dropped the hammer with a loud clang and lay flat on his back in the garage, inhaling the heady scent of paint and wood glue. There were so many cobwebs on the ceiling that it looked like dirty cotton wool had been stuck there.

"Covered in cobwebs, like my heart," Lance sang to himself, immediately dismissing the lyric as too emo. Even though 'too emo' was exactly how he felt.

Damn it, Pietro had been single for about five seconds before he went slutting off with an X-Man, of all people! Lance thought he would puke when he saw them strolling into the night together, so blatant in their flirting. In fact, he'd go as far to say that Pietro oozed desperation; hanging on Ray's every word like he actually cared.

And on top of that, Lance didn't know if he was jealous of Ray, or disappointed in Pietro. Was Maximoff really so shallow that the next guy who came into the house would do? Lance felt sick, and the wound in his shoulder was smarting. He'd taken a spike for somebody who really, brazenly, didn't care.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Just a big, Fred-sized thank you to readers so far! This is a very old story that I found on one of my Jurassic laptops, I'm now trying to finish it off. And as an aside to DeNile - I love Ray, crazy-looking minor character that he is. Don't worry; the boys won't hurt him too much!

...

A week passed, and things slowly began to transform.

Thanks to Xavier's compensation cheque, the Brotherhood enjoyed the luxury of extra spending money. In a stroke of genius, Todd had persuaded a highly-strung Lance to 'take finances into my own hands.' This meant that Lance had no idea how much compensation they had actually been given; instead, he just sat back and enjoyed the feeling that for once, all the bills had been paid and the cupboards were stocked with a never-ending supply of food and drink. If this wasn't good enough, Todd had bought a brand new, top-of-the-range, 52-inch television with a built in home-entertainment system. Fred had branched out from cooking with dirt-cheap, suspicious supermarket food. He was discovering the art of gourmet ingredients, concocting a variety of hit-and-miss recipes (the caviar, saffron and gold-leaf risotto was particularly noteworthy.) And on top of all this, Todd slipped everybody a generous amount of cash in the morning. Strangely enough, nobody seemed to argue with the Bank of Todd and Xavier's suspiciously benevolent payment.

Since the concert, the stormy relationship between Todd and Wanda had mellowed. Wanda was less infuriated and disgusted by Todd, and Todd was less overbearing towards Wanda. It seemed that he didn't need to follow her around and declare his undying love every hour of the day anymore. They could now hold a conversation that didn't end in violence, and it transpired that they got on rather well. Underneath the bravado, Todd and Wanda were fundamentally the same – unpopular adolescents who wanted to be liked. Wanda also enjoyed Todd's change of image, and was an active force in helping Todd embrace all things goth. As time went by, Wanda began inviting Todd to the previously forbidden territory of her bedroom to listen to CDs and read gothic magazines. Wanda's bedroom outstripped all of Todd's dreams – he felt so honoured to be there that he would barely breathe in case he blew one of her candles out.

Unfortunately for Lance, Pietro and Ray grew closer and closer. Sparks and Speedy made an excellent match, both thrill seekers living for the moment. Ray didn't tire of Pietro's boundless eccentricity, in fact he added to it with enthusiasm. Like Pietro, Ray had a vast range of talents and interests and provided endless entertainment. Pietro was fascinated by Ray's powers, he would sit for hours and watch Ray manipulate electricity. Ray could make anybody's hair static if he shook their hand after rubbing his own hands together. He could make the street lights flicker in intricate patterns, change the letters around in LED displays, switch channels on a TV... the list was endless.

"Sooo much cooler than John's stupid powers," Lance overheard Pietro saying to Wanda.

Lance didn't think so. He could move the earth; destroy whole cities if he wanted to. Using the ancient wisdom of Pokemon, rock types would win against electric. If it came to a duel, so be it. He'd defeat Ray before Ray could even attempt to say Berzerker.

There was one thing stopping Lance from standing his ground with Ray Crisp, and that was the fact that Ray Crisp was an exceptionally nice person. Ray was cool, Ray was funny, Ray was easygoing and respectful. Ray always asked Lance how he was and engaged him in conversation, and he kept inviting him gigs and vintage car shows. What Lance would give for a friend like Ray, if the circumstances were different...

There was no real reason to be jealous of Pietro and Ray just yet. They'd been together a week, and Lance didn't even know if they were dating. Unlike John, Ray wasn't blatant about kissing Pietro or running his filthy hands all over that body. Ray didn't stay over, and they didn't bombard themselves in Pietro's room for uncomfortably noisy sessions. As far as Lance knew, Ray and Pietro hadn't even had sex yet. But knowing Pietro, they would have gone through the whole gay Kama Sutra by now...

In fact, Pietro had not gone past kissing with Ray. That first evening in Scorch, Pietro had put the usual moves on Ray of devastatingly smouldering eye contact, pouting and painfully lingering touches. Ray certainly read the signs, but his response was not what Pietro was used to.

"You're sexy as hell," Ray began, which, though he knew it anyway, Pietro never grew tired of hearing. "But I'm not gonna cheapen myself. If you want this, you have to wait."

Well.

Pietro had never been told to wait before. The ball had never been in somebody else's court – for as long as Pietro could remember, he seduced, sex happened, and then it all went wrong. Something clicked when Ray used the word 'cheapen' and Pietro felt a horrible recognition of what he had been doing to himself and other people. So, because Ray asked him to wait, Pietro waited and let a relationship spin out slowly for once. The question was, was Ray worth waiting for?

There wasn't the instant flame (ha) that he'd had with Johnny. Really, the only reason that he was interested in Ray in the first place was because he was desperate. Yet now that he was getting to know Ray, he could see a lot of potential in their relationship. Ray was a good person; he would never do anything hurtful. The more Pietro looked at Ray, the better looking Ray seemed. The punky hair and wacky dress sense worked because it directly reflected Ray's unique 'Rayness.' If you looked at Ray without the piercings and flair, he had abnormally green eyes, a handsome cleft chin and the long, sinewy body of a dancer. And Ray was so much fun! It wasn't just the powers; Ray really knew how to enjoy himself. The two times they had been to Scorch, Ray had set the place alight with his quirky dancing and insane zest for life. It was safe to say that Ray behaved nothing like a dorky X-Man - he was like another member of the Brotherhood minus the bad attitude and overwhelming hatred for all humanity.

All in all, Ray was a catch. Everybody liked him, even Wanda. Being with Ray made Pietro want to be a better person; the trouble was, that better person wasn't really Pietro.


	8. Chapter 8

It had been a truly dismal day at school for Lance. It all went downhill from learning the word 'dismal' in English, which had been used to describe his essay on Frankenstein. How was he supposed to know that the monster wasn't called Frankenstein? He hadn't even attempted to read it – it was long, it was boring, and he wasn't good at reading. Reading was for clever, arty people like Pietro. Pietro could read a book in a minute, and recite the whole thing a year later.

After his dismal, dumb and disappointing lesson, Lance had double Chemistry to look forward to. He was given the insufferable humiliation of being partnered with Jean Grey, who treated him like he was even stupider than he really was. It all got a bit too much when she warned him not to touch the Bunsen Burner as it was "hot," and Lance firmly scribbled 'GO FUCK URSELF' in her exercise book. Jean being Jean, she sprang up to show Mr Klaus, who awarded Lance with three days' worth of detention.

Then lunch, and Lance could not stomach his food while Ray and Pietro were at the table play-fighting and giggling. It wasn't any better when he sat with Wanda, Todd and Fred. Wanda and Todd were flicking through Todd's sketchbook, which was now filled with pages and pages of voluptuous vamipiric vixens. Fred chipped in here and there by saying "That one looks just like you, Wanda," which was clearly one of Todd's devices to charm her. It seemed to be working, as Wanda was blushing underneath all her powder.

So Lance spent his lunch hour half-heartedly playing soccer with the boys who were always in detention. The usual insults shared by boys during sport began to touch a nerve with Lance after Dave Davidson called him an "ass-lovin' queer." Lance's guts knotted inside when he heard that, wondering if people had guessed his feelings for Pietro. And he didn't like the thought of himself being gay any more than Dave Davidson did.

That led him to Algebra, where he sat at the back of the class wondering if he _looked_ gay. He wasn't effeminate or camp, he knew that. But he could look gay in that ridiculously butch way with his long hair and rough 'n' ready dress sense. And he drove a Jeep; that was surely a gay vehicle. God, he looked gay! All he needed now was to grow a handlebar moustache and get a tattoo that read 'HOT ROD.'

After that crappy day, Lance was throwing his unread books back into his locker when he was confronted with the face that had launched the "ass-lovin' queer" anxiety.

Pietro gave Lance a mock salute and leaned casually against the lockers, exuding grace. "Well, don't you look happy," he said drily.

"Bad day?" asked another voice, which was inevitably Ray. "How about we grab that beer and you can offload?"

Lance squinted at Ray and muttered something about being busy. Ray probably wanted to grab a beer with him because he looked gay. Gay like Ray, who didn't look gay either.

Then Pietro said something that made Lance's insides fizz and boil and swish around all at once. "You can't have Lance this evening, I need him."

Ray was clearly not the jealous type, as he laughed and raised an eyebrow suggestively. "Would it be rude of me to ask why?"

Not as rude as the thoughts Lance was thinking...

"Nursey here's got to remove some stitches," Pietro said. "All fifty of 'em."

"Damn," Ray winced and sucked his teeth in sympathy for Lance. "Sounds painful."

"It's okay," shrugged Lance, trying to look as macho as possible. He didn't want his face to betray the fact that he was actually excited about getting the stitches removed, just for that undivided attention from Pietro, the idea that their flesh might actually touch.

"Alvers has nerves of steel," Pietro said proudly to Ray, as if Lance was his boyfriend. He dropped his voice to a purr, hand straying dangerously close to Ray's backside. "Of course, it helps to have an attractive, sexy nurse who's incredibly good with his hands..."

Ray grinned at Pietro, but his tone was firm. "Stop that."

And weirdly, Pietro stopped. Lance blinked. Pietro had just been rebuffed. Nobody rebuffed Pietro.

A boy with a turquoise streak in his hair waved at Ray from across the hall. Lance couldn't help thinking that they were going to a Crayola-Hair Convention. "Crispy! You comin'?"

"One second!" Ray called back. "Guess I'll see you guys tomorrow then," he said, looking from Lance to Pietro. He gave Pietro's hand a surreptitious squeeze while his back was turned to his friend, looking briefly into those hard-to-read blue eyes. "Take care of Lance, P."

"I will," Pietro replied, but Ray had already gone. Suddenly, the last thing Pietro wanted was to be left alone with Lance, who looked at him with fire in his eyes; Lance, who knew exactly who Pietro was.

...

Todd's head was beginning to feel fuzzy from all the incense. In the dim light of the candles, he could just make out Wanda, once again flicking through his sketchbook. He didn't know what the big deal was about his drawings, they were only cartoons but Wanda couldn't stop looking at them.

"I never you could draw," she finally said. In the past, she would have said this with bitterness or in a cold, stand-offish way. Her voice was softer now, more genuine. "Actually, I never knew you could do anything except beatbox."

Todd's eyes widened hopefully. "You like the beatboxin'?"

"No," Wanda replied in a firm, flat way that clearly stated her disapproval. This was more like the Wanda of old, the girl who didn't notice or care when her rebukes made Todd sigh and hang his head in shame.

Now, Todd was surprised to find something welling up in him other than disappointment. He raised his drowsy head sharply, looking at Wanda as if he had seen her for the first time.

"Well, I ain't doin' it to please you," sniffed Todd, whose self-esteem had improved from mosquito size to that of a large beetle. "Beatboxin's who I am, yo. Ain't all of us lucky enough to grow up in houses."

Wanda gave Todd an extremely pointed look as if to say 'Hello? I grew up in a damn asylum' She drew her angular features into a haughty sneer, looking like an eagle staring down at her kingdom.

"Sorry," Todd said automatically. "I'm just sayin, you gotta let me be me sometimes. I grew up on the streets and beatboxin' was my way of making enough money to survive."

Wanda coughed awkwardly. "Sorry, Toa – Todd, I didn't know about your past."

"Ain't exactly something I'm proud of," Todd muttered, skittering his black-painted Converse along the floor.

There was a creak as Wanda got up from her bed and sat next to Todd on the floor. "Well, there's something we have in common. I specialise in shitty pasts."

Todd shivered – Wanda was sitting so close to him that their arms were touching. His head got so fuzzy that it felt like it was filled with washing machine lint, or the handfuls of Lance's hair that clogged up the shower. And here was Wanda saying that they had something in _common_, something to talk about, and something to take refuge in...

"Well, I think I can out-shitty your shitty past," Todd said. "My mom was, and is a massive junkie."

"My mother's dead," Wanda shrugged. "But I didn't know her, so yours is probably worse. However, my father is Magneto."

Todd clinked his wine glass with Wanda. "Touché. I don't even know who my dad is."

Wanda laughed softly in sympathy. "See if you can get worse than this: when I was in the asylum, I had to sit a dark room with no food or drink for three days straight while they tried to work out what was wrong was me."

"Very gothic, babycakes," Todd said with a twisted grin. "I got kidnapped when I was nine, and spent a month travelling the Deep South in some paedo's truck."

"Oh god," Wanda winced. "That is bad." She put on a faux-serious voice, as if she were narrating a charity appeal. "During a psychotic episode when she was fourteen, Wanda cut off her little toe and ate it."

Todd's hand flew to his mouth. "No way!"

"Yep," Wanda replied, rolling down a red striped stocking to free a small white foot, which indeed had a toe missing. "I was one crazy bitch. I really hope you can't beat that."

"Fuck," Todd gasped, staring at an otherwise perfect foot. Or did it make it more perfect, knowing that Wanda bore such a unique wound?"

"Can't beat it exactly, but I wanna show you somethin'," Todd offered. "It's not pretty, but it's kinda similar."

He proceeded to stick out his tongue fully, and although Wanda had seen trying to steal her half-eaten food or something else revolting many times before, she had never taken in how strange it was. Todd really was beyond human; his tongue was long, thin and black and coiled neatly in his mouth when it wasn't being used. And the more she looked at it, she realised that there was something else extraordinary about it.

"You've had stitches on it!" she cried.

"I have," Todd said, although as he was rolling up his tongue at the time it came out as 'bleh bleh.' "I have," he said again when his tongue was safely put away.

There were a few beats of silence. Wanda pulled a stray thread from her black lace dress, unsure of what to say.

"I tried to cut my tongue off, like your toe," Todd explained. A rare blush crept upon his sallow face. "I was thirteen, and people passin' by on the street turned the other way when they saw this weird froggy dude catchin' flies from a dumpster. They said I was disgusting and that I should be in a freakshow. Well, I was a dumb kid so I thought if I chopped my tongue off, I'd be... normal, yo. Didn't think it would bleed so fuckin' much. Some bleedin' heart charity worker put my tongue on ice and took me to hospital, and they sewed the damn thing back on! And I had to thank her," Todd chuckled darkly.

Wanda shook her head slowly in disbelief, a dark curl falling into the centre of her forehead. For a second, Todd thought that she was going to say something serious and he felt his insides squirm in apprehension. Instead, she laughed too. "Well, at least you didn't eat it."

"Shut up, you toe-munchin' freak!" Todd replied in good humour. Wanda nudged him sharply in the ribs, a gesture that Todd was used to in different circumstances. It would normally mean 'get the hell away from me, slimejerk,' but now Todd took it to be affectionate. Friendly. The way that he and Freddy might act around each other, except that Wanda was clearly more attractive.

Unbeknown to Todd, Wanda was experiencing feelings of extreme guilt. She had been truly awful to Todd, even taking his creepy stalking and painful devotion into account, she had been too cruel. And now, she had turned him into a goth to make their friendship acceptable. Poor Swampscum was trying to be something he wasn't, when the real Todd wasn't actually that bad.

That was when Wanda hatched a plan so selfless that it scared her. If Todd was prepared to change himself, then so would she.

...

Like a summons to the gallows, Lance walked slowly to Pietro's room with a leaden sense of dread in his stomach. He didn't understand why the thing that he'd been looking forward to had suddenly turned so nerve-wracking. 'It's the pain,' he told himself, thinking that he must be scared of the inevitable soreness as the stitches were cut. He wasn't willing to think that what he was really dreading was that time with Pietro, the things that he might blurt out when numbed with whiskey or the agony of rejection.

"The Doctor will see you now," Pietro called from within, wheeling out on his desk-chair to catch a glimpse of his patient. "Well, don't just stand there!"

Lance sighed and entered Pietro's bedroom. He was always shocked by the amount of clutter in Pietro's room, given the neatness of his appearance. Books and magazines were stacked almost to the ceiling, cupboards and drawers groaned with an excess of clothes and strange possessions. There was significant proof of Pietro's fickle attitude to interests and hobbies from a cricket bat to a clay Buddha to an easel with a half-finished self portrait. Lance couldn't help noticing that Pietro had painted himself to resemble his father than he really did.

Pietro adjusted the 'equipment' on his desk of a pair of nail scissors, some tweezers and the offending bottle of whiskey. He couldn't stop thinking of the way Ray had said "Take care of Lance." 'Take care' had so many implications – of course, he was physically taking care of Lance. But did Ray mean more than that? Had Ray also sensed how weird and intense Lance was around him? Or was it a warning about Lance; a sign that Ray didn't trust him? Probably, Ray was just being nice. Ray _was_ nice.

Lance felt that he had to start some kind of conversation. "The wound doesn't really hurt anymore. You did a better job than any doctor."

Noting the flattery, Pietro nodded. "Couldn't let my good friend Lancey bleed to death, could I?"

He stressed the word friend in a rather obvious way, paranoid from Ray's words.

"Suppose not," Lance grumbled, taking his shirt off and dumping it on the floor. Using the word 'friend' in the same context, he added, "That's what friends do, right?"

"Yes," Pietro agreed stiffly. He pushed the bottle of whiskey at Lance, who pushed it straight back. He didn't trust himself to drink in this situation; he would rather have the pain.

Pietro gave Lance a serious, quizzical look. "It _will_ hurt," he reminded the stubborn boy, who sat there like a Greek god with his golden sculpted chest and dark flowing hair.

"Whatever," Lance replied; pouring a capful of the alcohol onto his wound and resisting the overwhelming urge to flinch. "I can handle a little pain."

"Such a manly man," Pietro declared. "Just like me," he added with a wink, hoping to dissolve the loaded atmosphere.

Lance didn't laugh. Scowling, Pietro picked up the nail scissors and considered pricking the oh-so-manly Lance to see just how much pain he could handle. He wanted his friend back, not the brooding shadow of a Lance who replaced him.

"Sure you're ready for this?" Pietro asked, nodding from Lance's wound to the scissors.

"Would I be here if I wasn't?" Lance answered almost sulkily. Pietro was acting weirdly, as if they weren't even friends. And he was desperately trying not to look into those cobalt eyes, which were inches from his bare chest as they tried to locate the end of the stitch. Damn, Pietro's breath fluttered on his skin, suggesting a different closeness altogether. Flesh on flesh, breath close...

"Crap!" Lance cried as Pietro found the end of the stitch and plucked hard at it with the tweezers, jerking it out with much more force than necessary.

"Sorry, I thought you could take a little pain," Pietro replied coolly. "Lance, what the hell is up with you?"

As another stitch was pulled, Lance's skin tingled and burned. "Nothing," he said through gritted teeth. "Nothing's up."

Pietro drew back from Lance's shoulder and gave the boy a sharp, condescending look, arching a dark eyebrow.

To avoid further suspicion, Lance decided on the ever popular tactic of changing the subject. "So, you and Ray," he said airily, trying to sound entirely okay with the whole thing when the reality of it was like sticking pins in his eyes. "How's that working out?"

"Fine," Pietro replied unnaturally quickly. He moved even closer to Lance's wound and dabbed it with a little cotton wool, avoiding the powerful dark gaze. "Fine. Ray's cool, we have fun together. And he's good person, I mean, after all that stuff with John -"

" – You sure moved on quickly from that," Lance interrupted, physically straining himself to keep the bitterness out of voice. He was smiling like Kitty Pryde on crack.

Pietro stopped immediately, tweezers poised at a stitch. "Meaning?"

"Just..." Lance floundered for words. He definitely didn't want to upset somebody with a variety of sharp objects close to hand. "Normally people take some time after ending a relationship. Most people don't move on so fast."

Fast. Well, that was a fucking great point. He was talking to Quicksilver, who moved, talked, thought and felt at the speed of light. Pietro rolled his eyes at Lance to reiterate that point.

"You can't help it when the chemistry's right," Pietro replied, catching a droplet of Lance's blood on a new piece of cotton. He held the cotton wool firmly on Lance's wound, feeling a deep languid pulse from the boy. He quivered, suddenly feeling sick, about to explode in the overwhelming intensity. What did he know about chemistry?

"Well... as long as the chemistry's right," Lance said softly, pulse escalating under the cotton that separated his skin from Pietro's.

All Pietro could manage was, "Yeah." Lance's skin was getting very hot.

The new few minutes were excruciatingly silent. Pietro could barely hold the tweezers as he removed the last stitches; he felt like sparks were crackling through every inch of his body. Lance's gaze wasn't on him, it was _in_ him and all he could think about was Ray, why don't you look at me like that, Ray?

And oh god, without realising, his lips were almost on Lance's, almost... almost...

He dropped the tweezers as if they were covered in Todd-slime. "Done, done, stitches all removed, Lance!" he gabbled in super-speed, wondering if he could throw himself out of his own window.

"Thanks," replied Lance, frowning at his friend's agitation. "Are you okay?" he asked, putting a hand on Pietro's jittery arm. The boy jolted like he had been electrocuted.

"Yes, no, probably not, maybe, who the hell knows!"

Pietro's eyes darted around the room, finally resting on Lance with a pained cry of frustration. There had to be a reason for the way he was feeling. What was it, was he scared of Lance? Maybe, but he was also aroused, hungry for that hot skin. _That_ hot skin? Perhaps the situation reminded him of the sex he had to wait for with Ray. Only Ray didn't look at him like that, Ray didn't give him that tidal wave of doubt and fear and want and need. ..

"You can go now," Pietro said quietly, in tones that suggested under-no-circumstances could Lance stay.

Lance's heart felt like Freddy had accidentally sat on it. "Thanks, really," he said to Pietro, turning to leave.

He was reminded of the sensation when you hold two magnets apart from each other, the unbearable pressure they create to come together.

"You took the spike," Pietro replied, eyes cast to the ground.

Wounded once more, Lance faced him with narrowed eyes. "Yeah. I did."

And with that, Lance left. Pietro sank down onto his bed, reeling in the whiskey fumes.


	9. Chapter 9

AN: For my faithful readers – thank you, it means so much to see your words and to know that you're enjoying the story. I aim to please!

...

Following Pietro's dismissal, Lance aimed to get as far away from the house as possible. He wanted to get so drunk that he forgot his own name. The way he saw it, if he couldn't kill the wriggling mass of feelings inside him, he could drown them in beer for a night.

The weather perfectly mirrored his emotions – it was dark, dull and miserable. A chilly mist of rain blasted his face with every gust of wind, and by the time he got to Metros, his hair was stuck to his sad, tired face.

Metros smelt of stale beer, piss, smoke and vomit. As if this wasn't bad enough, they had tried to conceal the revolting odour with a cheap vanilla air-freshener that only heightened the stench.

Lance ordered a beer and took it to a booth with suspicious stains on the threadbare velvet cushions. He squinted through the cheap lighting and cigarette smoke, wondering how many other lonely losers were there tonight.

"Hey, we can have that beer after all!" a warm voice cried. Lance's heart sank to find Ray hovering over his table. He wanted to be alone, and that didn't really entail hanging out with the boyfriend of the person he was trying to forget.

"What are you doing in Metros? You should be at home resting if you've had stitches removed," Ray said kindly, sitting next to Lance without invitation. Lance scowled into his beer, too polite to tell Ray to go away.

"It's not like I had an arm chopped off," Lance shrugged. Why the hell should Ray be concerned about his stupid wound that he got from taking a stupid spike for a stupid boy?

Ray clinked his bottle of beer against Lance's. "Man, you are tough! I like your style, straight from minor surgery to the bar..."

Lance mumbled something about needing a drink after the day he had.

"Well, the next one's on me," Ray said, giving Lance an easy-going smile. 'Damn you for being so nice,' sulked Lance.

"We could go to a club if you want," suggested Ray. He leaned in close to Lance, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper. "Don't worry; I've got the cash..."

"Of course you do, you're an X-Man," grumbled Lance. "Though I should thank you guys for your donation, I guess."

Ray gave Lance that impossible-to-hate smile that showed the dimple in his chin. "Hey, it was only a thousand bucks, it's not like -" He trailed off, eyes widening as he realised that he had said something he shouldn't.

"Your Prof's lying to you," Lance said simply. "We have way more than a thousand bucks. Unless Todd's been getting the money somewhere else..."

"Haha!" Ray yelped raucously. "All this money and you don't even know where it comes from! Freaky!"

Lance narrowed his eyes at Ray, sensing that Sparks knew more than he let on. He took a long swig of beer. With perfect comic timing, Ray took a swig of beer and set his bottle down at the same time.

"Actually, I'm glad I caught you," Ray said, his green eyes suddenly full of concern. "Can I talk to you about Pietro?"

What a fantastic surprise! Lance delayed the question by drinking more beer, swilling it around his mouth like mouthwash. "Why?" he finally said, dark eyes flashing.

Ray began to fiddle with the label of his bottle. "I just want to clarify a few things..."

There was a short cynical whistle from Lance. "Ray, if you have to know one thing about P, it's this: you will never, ever be able to clarify a single thing."

"He's a bit... different," agreed Ray. "I get that. I'm just kind of concerned about him. The night I met him, he spent the whole time telling me about his ex and he just threw himself at me. "

'Slut,' Lance thought bitterly.

"Obviously I said no," said Ray, and Lance liked him more immediately. "Call me old fashioned, but I'm not cool with sleeping with random people. And he was – I dunno,_ is_ on the rebound. I don't want to hurt him."

Lance couldn't believe what Ray was saying. Pietro, the seductive Speedster, hadn't been able to put moves on Ray. And why? Because Ray respected him and cared about his feelings. "You _are_ a good person," he said with more awe than he intended.

"Am I?" Ray gave a shy grin. "I get the feeling you guys aren't used to being respected."

"We're dogshit, man," Lance replied, only half-serious. "But really... It's good that you respect Pietro, he needs that. You're good for him. I just wish that..." Lance trailed off, silencing himself with a drink.

Ray's green eyes flashed. "What?"

"What?" Lance parroted dumbly.

"You wish that...?" Ray looked pointedly at Lance, as if he was waiting for a revelation. Or, worryingly, as if he knew exactly what Lance wished.

Damn it! Lance fumbled quickly through his pockets, bringing out a tatty packet of cigarettes and a lighter. "Smoke?" he offered.

Ray accepted, and the boys lit up in silence, both suspicious of the other.

"I'm not sure if Pietro's being himself with me," Ray finally admitted. He found Lance very easy to talk to – unlike his fellow X-Men, Lance made no assumptions and listened without butting in.

Lance laughed through a haze of smoke. "Is he being a stubborn, bipolar pain in the ass?"

"Not quite," Ray replied, ruffling his quirky orange tuft of hair thoughtfully. "Don't get me wrong, we have fun... It's just; I don't feel like we're really connecting."

"You don't?" Lance asked, sitting up in his chair as hope fluttered through his veins.

"We don't really talk about anything important," Ray shrugged. "He just wants to play pranks, go out and try to get into my pants. That's all okay," he added hastily. "But he could do that with anybody. In fact, I get the feeling that he would do that with anybody. I don't want to be the rebound guy. I dunno, maybe he needs somebody else..."

"S-somebody else," Lance spluttered. He could have been that person, and he had a distinct impression that that was what Ray was implying.

A girl with long blonde curls walked by and gave Lance a blatant wink through thick false lashes.

"Damn, she's hot!" exclaimed Ray. "You should get her number," he said, and his eyes glittered with the challenge.

_He knows, he knows, oh holy fuck he knows..._ In Lance's panic, he caught his cigarette on the back of his hand. He tried to style out the burn by laughing, but it came out as a sort of strangled blare.

"Ouch, dude," said Ray. "So, how about you get that number?"

Lance shook his head, hair flying in all directions like a wet dog. "No, no... I'm not really into – blondes." Except silver blonds, he added mentally.

"Ah." Ray threw Lance a sidelong glance. "You know, I'm just putting this out there because I like you. If you want me to, uh, back off from Pietro, I will."

"Why would I want that?" Lance tried to be nonchalant. "You're cool."

"Right," said Ray, stubbing out his cigarette. "I guess I should see how things go with Pietro, I mean, I do really like him."

A chorus of 'FFFFFFFUCK!' rang in Lance's ears. If he said no, Ray would know for sure about his feelings. But if he said yes, then the agony of the Speedy-Sparks relationship would carry on... Ray Crisp was one clever kid, and he had Lance exactly where he wanted him.

Ray rested his chin on his hands and sighed wistfully. "I just don't know if Pietro's worth it..."

"Oh god, is he!" Lance exclaimed, igniting with uncontrollable passion. "You won't ever get a guy like Pietro again. He's amazing – the more you get to know about him, the more you realise exactly how unique he is. Did you know he speaks 206 languages? And that his heart beats six times the rate of a normal human's? And man, I hate to say this, but he is stunning to look at. Stunning! Look, I know he's a big ball of crazy but he's not a bad guy. Underneath it all; he's a scared kid who just wants somebody to love him," Lance paused, eyes shining and chest heaving. "And I wish... I wish... You know... I wish it could be me," he admitted, putting his face in his hands morosely. What a lame-o he was, Ava-lame.

"Hey," soothed Ray, having no qualms about rubbing Lance's back. "I don't want you to think you're transparent, but I kind of got those vibes from you. I'll break things off with Speedy, it's okay."

Lance removed his hands from his face, and looked at Ray like he had grown another curious orange-tufted head. "I can't ask you to do that!"

Ray waved a hand in dismissal. "Who's asking? Come on Lance, it's no big deal. We've only been together a week, and even that wasn't serious."

Somehow Lance had the sinking feeling that Pietro wouldn't see things Ray's way. "I thought you liked him."

"Not as much as you," Ray said fairly, giving Lance a curt nod that suggested 'argue with me anymore and I'll electrocute your face off.'

"But he likes you," Lance said. If he had a cookie for all the times Pietro had said 'Ray' in the last week, he'd have made Fred look like Twiggy by now.

"Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't," replied Ray with a neither-here-nor-there shrug. "Perhaps I'm a sap, but I can't stand in the way of your feelings. Lance, I'm stepping down," he announced with the air of a great politician about to withdraw his troops from a warzone. "It's up to you whether you act on it or not."

And surprisingly, the heavy clouds of doubt began to lift from Lance immediately. If Ray was prepared to break things off with Pietro, then Pietro was free for the better man. Well, perhaps not the better man – without a doubt, Ray was morally, emotionally and intellectually better off than Lance. But if Ray the nicest guy in the world felt that Lance had a better chance with Pietro, then maybe Ray the nicest guy in the world had a point.

"You know what? You're right," Lance said, slamming down his beer with an air of finality. "I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna tell him. What's the worst that can happen?"

Well, humiliating cry-like-a-little-girl rejection, for one. But that didn't matter! Lance Alvers had finally grown a pair and he was going to go after what he wanted for better or worse.

Lance patted Ray on the shoulder. With Ray's powers, he half-expected to get an electric shock and he was pleased to feel a slight crackle running through his body.

"Thanks, Ray. Seriously man, I owe you one!"

For some reason, Ray's mouth was working like he was trying to keep a straight face. "No biggie. Buy me another drink."

Saluting him, Lance stood up to go to the bar.

"Hey, Earthquake!" Ray called after him. Lance turned around to look, and Ray pointed to his hair with a foolish grin as if Lance should consult his own locks.

Confused, Lance ran a hand through his hair only to find that it was sticking up vertically, like that of a Troll doll.

"Static," he laughed good-naturedly as he flattened his mane. "Thanks a bunch, Sparks."

Yes, he had to thank Berzerker. As he stood at the bar, he came up with this immortally cheesy line, narrated in his head like the tagline for a summer blockbuster:

First, Pietro had flaming passion. With his next boy, he made sparks. Now, his very world was about to get well and truly rocked.


	10. Chapter 10

AN: Thank you; thank you, thank you readers. May the Lietro dance begin! Oh... and Nemhaine – Freddy's after 'moar pizza' thanks to you!

...

Saturday morning brought the calm before the inevitable storm.

Lance had told Freddy, Todd and Wanda Ray's intentions to break things off with such gravity that he might have been telling them that Ray was leaving on a mission to Mars.

"Man, I'm gonna miss that guy," Todd sighed wistfully. "He's only been in our lives a short while, but I ain't gonna forget someone that cool any time soon."

"He's not dying," Lance reminded Todd, resisting the temptation to roll his eyes. "It's just... things with Ray and Pietro didn't work out."

Wanda arched an eyebrow at Lance, eyes sparkling with cynicism.

"I hope Pietro doesn't want us to kick Ray's ass," Fred said miserably. "I couldn't bring myself to beat him up."

"Pietro's gonna be pretty bummed," said Todd, 'bummed' being something of an understatement.

"Oh, Lance will pick up the pieces," Wanda said in a manner that sounded flippant, although her eyes screamed another message at Lance. A message that clearly said, 'Don't screw with my twin, Alvers.'

It was painfully apparent to Wanda that Lance had a _gargantuan_ crush on Pietro. The trouble was, Lance and Pietro were friends and Wanda knew that any complications in their relationship could lead to a _titanic_ amount of pain for her brother. Still, she knew she had to take a backseat in Pietro's love life. Especially today, when she had to perform a major transformation, like Cinderella only more... well... ghetto.

With this in mind, Wanda sloped off to get changed, leaving the three boys to wait nervously in the garage. Lance pretending that he was fixing the Jeep, while Todd pretended that he was helping.

"What's this?" Todd asked at frequent intervals, to which Lance would always answer, "A smobberator." Fred spent his time intending to Google smobberators, whatever they were.

Finally, at two o' clock, a silvery blur sped down the long elm-lined road towards the house. It stopped at the front door, then seeing that people were in the garage, moved towards them.

"Afternoon, losers," Pietro said, mopping his brow with the hem of a turquoise basketball vest. "Single-handedly beat the Xavier School for the Stupid at B-ball," he declared smugly, although his smirk was strained a fraction.

While Todd and Fred breathed a sigh of relief that Pietro showed no signs of just-dumped craziness, Lance was looking hard for signs that Pietro was upset. For a horrible moment, Lance thought that Ray might not have broken up with him after all.

"Bad news though, Ray and I are over," said Pietro with sad little grin. His face twitched as if he was trying to keep it in one position.

Todd clasped Pietro's hand and patted him on the back, and Pietro made no effort to move away from him.

"That's a damn shame, yo," Todd shook his head. He had attempted to spike up his hair, and it stood up in random prongs like a child's drawing of a crown.

"It is. I liked Ray." Pietro's reply was ever so slightly robotic, clearly pre-meditated.

Fred nodded solemnly and stood up, jerking a sausage-like thumb towards the house. "Well, me and Todd have got to go count the money – errrr, do our homework. We have to go do our homework, right Todd?"

Todd's eyes bulged with the horror of what Fred had just said. Luckily, neither Pietro nor Lance was in a position to notice. "Uh huh, homework!" Todd announced, making a swift effort with Fred muttering rapidly about secrets.

A massive silence filled the garage. Lance fumbled nervously with an unidentifiable car part, wondering what to do. Common sense and confidence deserted him, and he was half-hoping that Pietro would make things easier by starting the conversation.

Which he did.

"What's that?" said Pietro softly, although he really wasn't interested in the strange anvil-shaped metal thing with knobs on that Lance was holding.

Lance passed the thing from hand to hand. "A smobberator."

"Smobberator," Pietro repeated, purely to fill the silence.

"Don't ask me what it does," Lance shrugged, putting the smobberator down with a clang.

Pietro sat down on a crate. "That's obvious," he said drily. "It smobberates."

He drew a hand over his face to wipe away the sweat, but somehow rubbed off the facade of everything being hunky-dory.

Sensing a change in mood, Lance tried to distract Pietro. "Tell me about the basketball – did you really thrash 'em?"

"Lance," Pietro lifted his head and revealed eyes that were almost lifeless. "There was no basketball. I went over there, he ended it and I ran a few hundred miles so I didn't have to think about it."

"Oh," said Lance. "Look, I'm really sorry about -"

Pietro's voice, although soft, reverberated off the hard brick walls. "No, you're not. Don't lie, Lance. I hate liars."

It had been unbearably humid all day, now a large rumble of thunder interrupted the boys.

Lance's eyes settled on Pietro, holding him with that dark power. "And what if I am lying?"

"I wish you were!" Pietro stood up suddenly and started to pace the floor, every movement fraught with frustration. "If it wasn't for you, I'd have a chance with Ray. I like Ray, Ray's good for me, I should be with Ray!"

Ray, Ray, Ray – Lance didn't believe it, didn't want to believe it. He took a step closer to Pietro, staring down at the slightly shorter boy. "Then why aren't you with Ray?"

Ever the brattish child, Pietro folded his arms and glowered at Lance. "Because he _dumped _me, Lance. Because apparently, we weren't 'clicking.' We clicked fine! But no, Ray said something about _chemistry_ between you and me; he had this stupid idea that we should be together," Pietro laughed it off nastily, eyes boring into Lance like two black icebergs. "Where the hell could Ray have got that idea, I wonder?"

Like a balloon slowly inflating, anger swelled up in Lance's chest. "If you're suggesting that I -"

"It's always so fucking intense with you, isn't it?" Pietro cried, wanting to run but finding himself rooted by Lance's gaze.

Another clap of thunder, and the rain began to fall, making loud pings against the corrugated iron roof of the garage.

Lance's voice fell to almost a plea. "So how can you say there's no chemistry?"

...

While Lance was consoling Pietro in the garage, Todd and Fred were making a royal mess of counting the money. Todd had tipped out his entire underwear drawer, and fetid socks and greying boxers were strewn around the small room like bodies on a battlefield. Fred kept losing count after fifty, so he had simply made several piles of fifty (and not all of them were accurate.)

Todd calculated that they would have lost several thousand dollars by now. It was hard to tell; in fact, it looked like the money had somehow multiplied since they last counted it.

"So, how much do we have?" asked Freddy hopefully.

"Lots," Todd finally concluded.

At this point, there was a knock on the door. Todd lunged for the money, throwing himself across it as if he were taking a bullet. "Shit! Don't let her in!"

Fred frowned, making a large crease in his doughy forehead. "But it's Wanda."

"The money!" hissed Todd, signalling frantically at it. "Gotta hide it. HANG ON, WANDA!" he warbled through the closed door. "Under your blanket," he said to Freddy, who still frowned.

"But what use will hiding under our blankets be? Shouldn't we hide the money?"

Todd bit hard on his fist to stop himself from screaming 'DUH!' at Fred. Because Fred was still perplexed, Todd yanked his own grubby blanket off the bed and threw it over the money, arranging his awkward limbs in a casual pose over the concealed piles of banknotes.

"Let her in," he hissed to Fred, who lumbered to the door with a final frown in Todd's direction.

"I'm gonna see if there's any more pizza," Fred murmured, throwing open the door and walking past Wanda without even looking.

If Fred hadn't been so preoccupied with the glorious option of more pizza and looked at Wanda, even he would have noticed the difference. She had shed her black, corseted wardrobe for something so alien to the goth look that she didn't even look like Wanda. Instead of a fishtail skirt and striped stockings, Wanda was wearing a pair of boys' jeans so baggy that the hung several inches below the crotch. These were held up by a belt with a buckle that could only be described as bling. On top, she wore a tiny white vest that revealed a pierced belly button. And Wanda had adorned her neck with a gold chain so long and so thick that it could have been a bike chain, and she had wrapped her dark locks up in a rather ambitious durag.

"Oh holy shit!" cried Todd. Forgetting the money, he sprang to his feet as Wanda bopped up to him in a well-rehearsed hood-boy walk.

"Yo-yo," she said, thinking that if she had gone so far with the look, she might as well milk it. "Where my bitches at?"

Todd was on the verge of laughing, crying or screaming for help. Maybe all three.

Wanda noted Todd's reaction. Poor Froggy probably thought she was having another breakdown and feared for his toes. "What up, dawg? I'm just tryin' to be fly, yo. Trouble is, I ain't much of a G."

"Girl, you got the moves!" Todd replied, slipping easily into familiar territory. He could tell that Wanda had made a real effort to take on his style after he turned goth, even if her interpretation of ghetto was truly ironic. He whistled, gesturing at her outfit. "And you are lookin' shit-hot, momma..."

Here, Wanda lapsed out of ghetto-talk to explain herself to Todd. "Thanks, Todd. I was worried you'd think I was making fun of you. My point was, it wasn't fair for me to expect you to turn goth. It's only right for me to walk in your shoes... Not your actual shoes," she added as an afterthought. "They're probably not that fragrant."

Todd shook his head slowly at Wanda, touched. "You are awesome, yo. But if it's alright with you, I liked you better as a goth."

"I'm so glad you said that," sighed Wanda, pulling off the durag and ruffling up her flattened hair. "You get the point I was making, don't you?"

"It's okay to be yourself," Todd recited as if he was feeding back to a teacher. He couldn't believe the lengths that Wanda had gone to for his benefit. It meant, he was sure, that she cared about him. Why else would a die-hard goth put on a durag of all things and speak the most outdated, stereotypical slang known to man?

Wanda winked, and Todd was relieved to see that she had kept her trademark eyeliner. "Bingo, Slimester. Now, I can't believe I'm about to ask you this, but before I get changed, can you teach this fly-girl to beatbox?"

...

Pietro spun around to face Lance with a deranged gleam in his blue eyes. "Chemistry?" he laughed. "Is that what this is? We can't even talk to each other! It freaks me out just looking at you. There's no chemistry, we're not even friends anymore!"

Stung, Lance lowered his gaze. Perhaps he had imagined the near-kiss yesterday. "Do you really believe that?"

The rain had reduced to a tiny pitter-patter. Pietro's heart lurched with guilt to see Lance looking so down. He didn't know what to say or do for the best.

"I don't know," Pietro said sadly. "You were my best friend, Lance. Things are just too weird between us now – you're not yourself and yeah, you're a dork, but I trusted you. Now I don't."

Lance heaved a long, shaky sigh. Well, this wasn't going according to plan. Pietro was supposed to be in his arms by now... or in the more colourful versions of his fantasy, in his bed by now.

"Don't you see? This is what happens when feelings come between friends." Pietro was really hoping that Lance wouldn't lose it and start _crying _of all things. No, that was ridiculous – Lance 'Macho Macho Man' Alvers probably didn't even have tear ducts.

"Suppose something happened between us and it didn't work out," Pietro reasoned. Lance opened his mouth to protest, but Pietro continued. "I'm being honest here," he said, which both boys knew was a rare occurrence, "it'd kill me to lose you."

There were rare flashes of silver when Lance understood Pietro. "Hey, I've been trying so hard to ignore this for the same reason," he said to the boy. "But look where that got us... I've already lost you."

Pietro bit his lip. Lance was always so intense because he felt things, and he wasn't afraid to feel them. Pietro, on the other hand, was a big fat wussy baby who ran as far away from his feelings as he could. That was what it had all been all about – he got with John to ignore his feelings for Lance he got with Ray to forget about John, he stayed with Ray because Ray wasn't Lance. And what was the constant in that equation?

"Lance," Pietro answered out loud. Lance raised his warm, liquid eyes as if he expected Pietro to say something else. A strange mood ran through Pietro, and his mouth quirked with a tiny grin. "You've got something on your face."

Lance touched his face suspiciously. "What, where?"

"Here," Pietro made a vague point towards his own face. "No, there," he said, pointing to a different area entirely as Lance examined his face in the Jeep's wing-mirror. "Let me show you," said Pietro, reaching out towards Lance's face. Then, when Lance was least expecting it, he flicked Lance hard on the nose.

"GOT YOU!" he cried triumphantly with a mischievous grin.

Lance slapped Pietro lightly on the cheek. "Bitch."

The boys laughed at each other for the first time in ages. Pietro's stupid trick had lifted the tension and reminded them that they were still friends. It was Pietro's unique way of saying that he wanted things to be okay again.

"That slap was a little fruity, Lancelot," Pietro crooned.

"I learned from the master," Lance bowed to Pietro. "And it's your fucking fault if I am a fruit. Do you think I wanted to fall in love with a camp, neurotic, arrogant little nerd?"

Miraculously, Pietro hadn't heard camp, neurotic, arrogant, little or even nerd. He recoiled from Lance; suddenly drop dead serious in the pin-drop quiet.

"F... Fall in love?"

Lance acted like nothing had happened. "Did I say that?" he asked, as if confessing his love was as ordinary as ordering a pizza.

"That's what you said."

"So what if I did? Would it make a difference?"

"No!" Pietro cried automatically. He swept his hair out of his face, trying to gain composure. "Yes," he admitted. "No!" he added as an afterthought.

Pietro felt Lance's warm presence behind him. "What if I kissed you? Would that make a difference?"

"N-no..." Pietro squirmed in the remarkable tension.

Lance's lips came up to his ear. "No? You almost kissed me yesterday..."

"Lance..." Pietro warned, heart thudding like sneakers in a washing machine. He was unbelievably tempted to let go and allow himself to kiss Lance's sexy little face off, but what would that mean?

And surprisingly, Lance backed off. He had seen enough to know that Pietro wanted this as much as he did (which was even more than Lance wanted Slash's guitar, not that he would ever admit to such a thing.) But he wasn't going to pull the strings anymore, oh no.

He turned to Pietro and said, "The ball's in your court now, P."

Pietro blinked up at Lance. What was with these boys giving him responsibility for his own actions? He wasn't sure that he liked it, he trusted himself far less than he trusted Lance.

Perhaps he was too engrossed in his own thoughts, because when he next looked up, Lance had vanished. Now, the question was whether to dodge the ball or to run with it and see if he could make a few baskets.


	11. Chapter 11

Before I begin, I've got to give maaaajor thanks to the legendary Nemhaine42 for drawing ghetto Wanda. Check it out here: .com/#/d2u0di2 and make sure you leave a comment on its greatness!

...

_Just do it, Quicky – don't be so damn stupid – what, are you chicken?– it's LANCE, damn it! – is it hot in here? – Lance is hot – damn it, it's LANCE!_

Pietro's thoughts were zooming around in irritating circles. This was an entirely more difficult decision than choosing which outfit was the drop-dead sexiest or pondering over whether his eyes were cerulean or sapphire. This was a deeper decision – it involved feelings, and not just his feelings.

Feelings that Pietro didn't particularly want. Feelings so strong that every time he saw Lance, his chest felt like it was going to explode and his blood burned through his veins and his head got misty with rose-scented fog. Nobody else made him feel like that. Lance made him feel vulnerable, and exposed for the frightened little wuss he really was. But on the other hand, Lance was one of the few people who knew the real Pietro. It was incredible that Lance still wanted him knowing all of his insecurities and crazy aspirations and bizarre little quirks. And it would be nice not to have to pretend for once... With Lance he could really let his guard down –

Let his guard down? No, no, no, he couldn't do that. His father had always told him to be careful what he did, and to mind what he said. Then again, his father wasn't exactly Mr Cuddles. Did he want to end up like Magneto aka The Great Buckethead, who couldn't even let his own children get close?

"Want some pizza?" somebody asked. Pietro looked up to see the gigantic figure of Fred in the doorway, cradling a half-eaten pizza.

Pleased with the distraction, Pietro scoffed. "I'm surprised you haven't turned into a pizza. Every time I see you, you're holding a slice of the good stuff."

"I like it," Fred shrugged simply. "I like it, I want it, I eat it."

"Very philosophical of you," Pietro replied, cocking his head to one side as he thought about Freddy's wisdom.

_I like it, I want it, I get it..._

Pietro frowned, not entirely thinking of pizza. "What happens if you eat too much pizza, wouldn't you get sick of it?"

Fred responded as if Pietro had blasphemed. "Never! I really like pizza, and I know I'll always like it."

_I really like Lance, and I know I'll always like him..._

"What if the pizza made you sick?"

_What if Lance hurts me?_

"Uh..." Fred looked suspiciously at the pizza, but bit into it anyway. "I might stop eating it for... like... a day, but I'd take the risk again."

Pietro's eyes glittered fiercely. "So you'd forgive him – it?"

"Whuh?" Fred looked from Pietro to the pizza as if he identified the hidden meaning, but had no idea what it was. "Sure, I'd... forgive the pizza..."

As was the way with Mr Maximoff, things got even weirder. "So you'd always trust the pizza, even if it made you feel bad?"

Fred looked like he was going to combust. "Trust the...? Do you mean... do you mean... I'd still like pizza just as much and I'd carry on eating it?"

"Yes!"

"Well, yeah," Fred replied simply. He scratched his head, wondering why people never said what they meant. Unless Pietro really did want to know about Fred's relationship with foodstuffs... "So, do you want some pizza?"

Pietro sprang up, suddenly scarily manic as if he'd embarked upon a plan. "No, no, Freddy-Fred-Fred... See, what I want is a big fat slice of metaphorical pizza."

"Oh," murmured Fred. "Yeah, this pizza just has pepperoni on it."

But he spoke to thin air, for Pietro had zoomed into the house before Fred could suggest that he tried a proper Italian place for Metaforico pizza.

...

Quietly smug about his talk with Pietro, Lance strolled back into the Boarding House feeling better than he had in a long time. Putting the pressure on Pietro instead had been a massive relief – now he whistled as he climbed the stairs and thought that for once, he would take an angst free nap.

Nothing could prepare him for the sight at the top of the stairs. Todd had left his bedroom door open, and he was attempting to break-dance whilst some ghetto chick did the worst beatboxing ever, and dear god, that ghetto chick was Wanda. Wanda with bling. Wanda in a durag. Wanda _laughing._

Mid freeze, Todd peered through his squat, flexible legs at Lance. "Yo yo yo, Alvers, my man!"

Wanda flicked her fingers in Lance's face like the rappers she'd watched on MTV. "What up, G?"

"Who are you and what have you done with Wanda?" Lance asked her doubtfully.

"Wanda had a little ghetto transformation," Todd explained, shifting from his freeze into a traditional squat. "Like Cinderella only with guns and shit. Wanna join our crew, yo?"

"Uh... yo, homies," Lance began, trying to formulate a suitable response. He felt like the unfathomably square father trying to be 'street' in front of his children. "Yeah, I'll join your crew – I'll be rollin' with my peeps, man."

Todd laughed triumphantly and saluted his friend. "Oh, he's fly alright. He's in our posse fo' shizzle."

"Know dat," Wanda remarked, folding her arms.

The three of them giggled like children, spurred on by Wanda's excellent talent for parody.

"Dance off!" Todd exclaimed suddenly, making one massive leap to his stereo to fill the room with thumping classic Snoop Dogg.

Wanda hesitated for a second. Todd extended a large hand into her face. "Bring it on, Wanda-dawg! Show me what you're workin' with, girl!"

So she did. She shook all of the junk in her trunk, and was rewarded by Lance's own passable interpretation of booty dancing. Todd was laughing so hard that he could barely join in – he didn't want the moment to end as he couldn't remember being so happy. He thought he would die before he saw Lance or Wanda make a fool of themselves – now, they were attempting breakdancing and falling over each other as they shrieked with laughter.

"Taxi for three to loony-land," a voice announced from the doorway. There stood Pietro, trying to smirk but failing miserably for the massive grin on his face.

"I've never had so much fun," Wanda grinned. Her smile startled Pietro, because he had forgotten it existed. This was a smile without cynicism or falseness; it had been locked away in his memory for years. She was seven years old again, a regular kid without any idea of the troubles ahead.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm dressed like this?" she asked her brother, whose eyes had gone very misty.

"Because you're still a kid," Pietro said softly. "Because we're all still stupid kids."

He did something very rare, and wrapped Wanda in a genuine hug. She patted his back awkwardly, unsure of his reaction. Then Pietro crossed over to Todd, hugging him with the same sentiment. He noted with some surprise that Todd didn't smell very much – there was only the tiniest whiff of socks.

"Uh – you okay, man?" Todd squinted over Pietro's shoulder.

"I'm great," Pietro said, releasing a slightly embarrassed Todd. "Just thanking you for making my sister so happy."

Wanda and Todd shared an uncomfortable look. It was most unlike Pietro to turn the situation into a sugary Disney hugfest.

"Well, I'm going to de-gangstafy myself," Wanda announced, glancing from her strangely emotional twin to the expectant Lance. Todd also seemed to sense that something was going to happen, as he mumbled something about seeing if there was any pizza left and made a swift exit behind Wanda.

"That was kinda weird," Todd said to Wanda as they crossed the creaky floorboard on the landing.

"He's not as cool as he lets on," replied Wanda, who was beginning to look a little emotional herself. "He's right though, Todd... Thank you."

A purplish blush crept up on Todd's sallow face. "Any time, yo..."

If Todd had been blushing before, his face was left positively scarlet when Wanda leant over and kissed him swiftly on the cheek. If she had done that before they were friends when he idolised her as a Gothic Super-Vixen, he would have grabbed her and never let go. Now, however, he took her kiss with a dignified smile.

Because she wasn't a goddess. She was Wanda, and she was his friend.

...

"Um... _Are_ you okay?" Lance eventually asked Pietro, who had gone very quiet after his hugging spree.

"I think so," said Pietro. "Kind of choked up... Last time I saw her happy, we were seven. That was the year she... Look, I just didn't think she'd ever smile again."

Lance cleared his throat and shuffled his feet on Todd's mangy carpet. He didn't want to think what was hidden under the blanket on the floor.

"Well, it's a good thing she's happy, right?" Lance offered. "I don't think you should be sad about it."

Pietro's blue eyes gleamed with a cocktail of emotions. "You know why I came up here, don't you?"

"To join our posse?" Lance teased.

"Lance."

The room became dark as the sky clouded over, threatening more rain.

"Well, look at me!" Pietro demanded, forcing Lance's eyes towards his. His eyes had a feral look about them with vast glittering black pupils.

Lance raised an eyebrow at Pietro. For somebody who was supposed to act and think at a hundred miles per hour, Speedy had certainly taken his time.

"I can't lie to you, Lance, I have my doubts," Pietro began. Lance rolled his eyes and slumped onto Fred's bed. "I mean, we're already a mess. Look at me," he said again, forcing Lance to lift his deep brown eyes. "If there's one thing I've learned being a Speedster, it's that no matter how much you try and run away from something, it'll always come back and slap you _wham_ in the fucking face. I could run and run and run from you and pretend I didn't feel anything, but I can't do that forever. I can't do that anymore. You know what I came up here to do. I came up to tell you I want you, I'll risk it, fuck it, it's always been you really."

He paused, noticing that Lance was grinning like a goofy idiot. It encouraged him to carry on, to heap more praise on the boy, to kiss his big stupid face off.

"This isn't lust or anything I've ever felt before, it scares the hell out of me, to be honest. But it's you, Lance. I know you were being a dork, but when I saw you dancing with Wanda just now, I could've kissed you there and then."

"Well, you hugged the other two," Lance managed to say. He was surprised he could speak when it felt like his heart was filling up his entire body. "Are you going to kiss me now?"

Rain lashed at the window, breaking loose in a sheet of grey water.

"Are you going to let me kiss you now?"

"Do you think it's smart to answer a question with a question?"

"Didn't you just do that?"

"Piss off, Speedo."

Lance shoved Pietro lightly in jest, but his hands stayed on the boy's collarbone. Breathing as if he'd ran several miles, his eyes fell on Pietro's mouth. Pietro veiled his eyes, revealing an arc of dark lashes. There was a tension so laced with need between them that it screamed in their ears. Thunder roared outside, and Lance's hands shook against Pietro's cool white flesh. Then lightning flashed, and Pietro seized Lance's face, taking his mouth in a kiss that was powerful and reverent, a kiss that was long overdue. Lance smiled against Pietro's lips, kissing back with depth and understanding. Relief coursed through him as he realised, 'I'm doing it, man!' God, he had waited so long. His heart was racing, pounding, flying. He fluttered with nerves and thrummed with passion.

Pietro drew back, still cupping Lance's stubbly chin. He noted with affection that Lance's eyes were still closed. _Sap, _he thought.

Lance kissed just like Pietro thought he would, patiently and responsively but with an underlying quiet strength. It wasn't threatening or overpowering, it was just ... Lance. And it felt right.

"About time, huh?"

"Yeah..." Lance opened his warm brown eyes and spoke drowsily. "So I kissed a guy... No turning back now..."

"No turning back," Pietro reiterated. "Though would you want to?" he added with a cocky smirk.

Lance took Pietro's hands off his face and held them both within his own. Touched by the simple gesture, Pietro nearly swooned. If he wasn't careful, Lance would make a silly squealing fangirl of him.

"Of course I wouldn't want to, dumbass," Lance said. "I waited for you, didn't I?"

Pietro's blue eyes had always seemed rather harsh and piercing to Lance, like chips of ice. Now they were softer and darker, like a lagoon on a hot summer night, or something else insufferably romantic. 

"And you took that spike for me," Pietro reminded Lance. It was only now that he recognised the meaning of it, and his body trembled with the idea. It became very quiet, except for the pouring rain and the hum of the passing traffic outside.

"I'd take all the spikes in the world for you, P," Lance whispered, dropping Pietro's hands to wrap him in a close, tight, most unbrotherly embrace.

Their next kiss was fierce, hungry and full of months of unspoken passion. Hands hesitant at first smooth pale shoulder blade and was instantly discarded to expose his bare neck and chest to a trail of kisses.

"Far be it from me to say slow down," Pietro panted, sweeping his tousled hair out of his eyes. "But things are getting pretty hot, and I'm not sure I can control myself if they go any further..."

Lance took off his sweat-drenched shirt, balled it up and threw it across the room. Pietro was impulsive and possessed very little patience – time after time, he slept with potential partners before you could say 'date' and things fell apart. Lance had to owe it to Ray for showing Pietro that sex was linked to respect; now, miracle of miracles, the horny speedster was showing him respect. Which was excellent, but not so great for an equally horny rockhead.

"You're right, I guess," Lance finally said, stretching his arms out wide so that every muscle in his broad chest rippled. Pietro scolded himself for being so damn respectful – by now, he could have seen all of that delectable god-like physique...

"Anyway, this is Todd and Freddy's room. Not really a setting for romance," Lance grinned. If they stuck together, it would be a very embarrassing tale to tell that they got together in a not-so-fragrant teenage den with pictures of topless chicks on the crumbling walls.

"Yeah, we should go," Pietro concluded. As he walked towards the door, he attempted to blow Lance a faux-sultry kiss, but failed to look where he was going. With a thud and a yelp, he landed sprawled on the floor between Todd and Fred's beds.

"Holy fuck, what the hell is all this crap?" Pietro cursed, rubbing a wounded knee. He noticed that Lance's eyes were very, very wide, and that the blanket had lifted underneath him to reveal a very, very large amount of money.

"Jackpot!" Pietro sang in an awed whisper. He grasped at the money to check that it was really there. He thrust a fistful of notes at Lance, who sniffed them as if they were a beautiful bouquet.

"Oh my god," Lance managed to say after several minutes of staring at the abundance of cash on the floor. He raised a fist triumphantly, declaring, "This is the best day of my life!"


	12. Chapter 12

Reviewers, I love you. No really, I do. Special love to Nemhaine for such a helpful review; I'm so sorry my link got turned to crap by . Follow Nemhaine's link on my reviews, guys and gals – it really is a fantastic picture! And nek0-sama, I am SO GLAD you find it funny; I find it incredibly difficult to write 'serious stuff' so _ta_ very much! Robb, I'll try my damnedest (?) to keep making you smile.

...

"I knew we had money, but I didn't know we could literally roll in it," Pietro said, clutching a fistful of notes as if they might escape. "Xavier couldn't have given us all this. There's, like..."

His eyes darted around the exposed piles of money at super-speed, mouth moving in fast-forward as he counted.

Then Pietro said a number so large that Lance couldn't follow it. All he knew was that it included hundreds of thousands, and its value was that of a really nice house. Or an extremely nice car. Or an incredibly flash holiday...

"I can't see Baldy giving us anything over a thousand for your injury," Pietro said with alarming accuracy. "So where the hell did all_ this_ come from, and more importantly," he slapped himself in the forehead to mark his stupidity, "why do I care?"

Lance threw the blanket aside to reveal fresh piles of banknotes. "No wonder Todd wanted to be in charge of the money. It's like a bank in here, man!"

They heard footsteps coming up the stairs and froze like guilty children, Pietro backing stealthily into the door. The footsteps passed, and went into the bathroom.

"Schmuffer a duff," said Pietro out of the side of his mouth like a 1920s Chicago mobster.

"WHAT?" stage-whispered Lance. He had one hand outstretched towards the cash, and one foot towards the door.

Pietro rolled his eyes. "Cover it up, assface! Quick, before someone comes."

The bathroom door clicked open, and said person stepped over the creaky floorboard on the landing. Eyes round with panic, Lance stuffed a wad of notes down his trousers and threw the nastily stained blanket over their findings.

Unfortunately, they didn't have time to leave the scene of the crime. The bedroom door opened to reveal a shirtless Lance and Pietro to its shocked inhabitants.

Todd clutched his chest in shock, thinking of the money. His eyes scanned the room to see if it was still covered, and whether the lumps under the blanket looked any smaller. "What have you two been doin' in here, yo?"

"Uh..." began Lance, who immediately realised how dodgy this looked. Two boys with their shirts off in somebody else's bedroom...

"What are you acting all suspicious about?" asked Pietro innocently. He gave the ghost of a wink to Lance and crossed the room towards Todd. "We stayed in here after you and Wanda left. I was checking on Lance's shoulder, that's why his shirt was off."

"Right," said Fred. His tomato-stained mouth made a thin slot of suspicion. "And why is your shirt off, Pietro?"

Fiercely protective of the money, Todd hopped on the blanket and squatted amongst the supposedly secret cash, staring owlishly at Pietro. "Yeah, why is your shirt off Pietro?"

Pietro nodded at Lance, eyes willing him to make something up fast.

Oh god. Lance swallowed hard, calling upon all the gods of blagging to save him now. "We've been trying to work out how close to the heart the spike hit," Lance said slowly. "And we needed our shirts off to get an accurate idea about where the average heart is."

"Oh."

Fred looked to Todd, who looked to Lance, who looked to Pietro, who looked to Fred.

"See, we wanted to work out how much compensation we're entitled to. We – Lance and I -think Xavier gave us too much compensation for such a minor injury," Pietro said, quietly challenging Todd.

Todd patted the blanket subconsciously. "Whatcha talkin' about? You don't _know_ how much compensation Baldy gave us. Or have you been snoopin'?"

"Have you been snoopin'?" parroted Fred, who suspected that Pietro and Lance weren't quite telling the truth about why they were half naked.

"No!" barked Pietro. His eyes narrowed, and his voice dropped to a suspicious whisper. "What have you got to hide anyway?"

"Nothin'," Fred strolled around the room with his hands in the pockets of a pair of enormous red shorts. "You and Lance look a little red in the face," he said in his simple way.

Now everybody understood that there were two secrets in the room, and two potential reasons for blackmail.

"So what if we do?" Lance puffed out his chest. "We know you're hiding something under that blanket."

"Aha!" Todd exclaimed, stabbing a gnarled finger at Lance's face, spittle flying from his sneering mouth. "We got us a pair of snoopers!"

Pietro snorted. "Get real, green-boy. We've got no idea what's under your precious blankie. And we don't care to find out, if you keep your nose out of our business."

Fred nodded sagely at Todd. "They were making out in here."

Speechless, Lance made a series of protesting grunts, bleats and yelps. It didn't help that Pietro just smirked and gave a Gallic shrug that completely verified Fred's claim.

"Aw man, gay stuff... In our bedroom!" Todd wailed as unwanted images of his naked cavorting team-mates swam into his head. For some reason, Lance had a moustache in his mental picture, but that was by far the least distressing thing.

"We – we -" Lance stuttered helplessly. He wasn't ready to be labelled gay. He and Pietro had only just kissed – he couldn't be branded a moustachioed queer, not yet!

Swift as ever, Pietro swooped in and saved the situation. He came right up close to Todd, crouching next to him on the blanket. With a grin that said 'try and stop me, bitch,' he pinched the edge of the blanket between finger and thumb and tugged on it ever so slightly. Horrified, Todd slapped Pietro's hand away with all the aggression of a protective mother bear.

"Little bitch," Pietro gasped, cradling his hand. He recovered quickly, and came nose to nose with Todd, speaking in a dangerous whisper. "Remember what I said, Todd. Keep your nose out of our business, and we'll keep schtum about yours. I think that's a pretty wise decision, don't you?"

"Yessir," Todd answered. There were few things scarier than Pietro's menacing act – it had been known to make jocks cry.

"Fred?"

"Yup, we'll keep quiet as long as you do. We'll just pretend we don't know anything."

"Won't be so hard for some of us," Pietro scoffed.

An awkward silence followed. Eventually, Todd made an exasperated little noise. "Will you two get outta here?"

Pietro got up from the blanket with a lazy, graceful stretch and threw Lance a winning smile. "I think that's our cue to leave, Mr Alvers."

"What, together?" asked Lance innocently with eyes as big as monster-truck wheels.

"Just go!" shrieked Todd, covering his eyes as yet more disturbing images of the pair came into his head. "I don't care where you go, I don't care what you do, but don't do it in here!"

"But you give us permission to do it?" teased Pietro, barely dodging a faceful of slime as he sped through the door.

"Toodles, Freddy and Todd. Remember, we know _nothing_."

With a blur and a rush of wind, Pietro ran through the house and out of the front door. Blinking with disorientation, Lance stood on the porch wondering how he got there in under a second.

Ah. Speedy. Lance didn't think he would ever get used to the super-speed – his brain and his guts were still in Todd's bedroom, but his body was... here.

Pietro leant in the doorway, striking a mock seductive pose with one arm over his head, gently caressing the dusty wood of the door-jamb. "Looks like I swept you off your feet there, Rocky-baby."

"Do that again and I'll really shake you up," retorted Lance, trying not to be sucked in by Pietro's mega-fluttering eyelashes as he played the beautiful love interest. "Do you have to be a jerk all the time?"

"Not all the time. Sometimes I'm a douchebag."

Lance couldn't argue with that. He put an arm around Pietro's waist and withdrew the bundle of banknotes from his trousers, Pietro glancing at Lance's crotch a little longer than was necessary.

"How about I take this douchebag somewhere we can drink and dance tonight?"

Pietro grinned sheepishly and took off his sneaker to reveal his own wad of cash. "Great minds think alike, huh?"

There had to be a thousand dollars between them. Lance shook his head slowly in disbelief. "How did Todd get this kind of money?"

"No questions asked," Pietro reminded Lance with a reprimanding tap on the nose. "Don't you see? We got 'em just where we want 'em. They know we know, but they can't let us know that they know we know."

Lance didn't follow. Still, he pretended to. "So we're pretending that we don't know?"

"No," said Pietro, who had become a little wrapped up in the word 'know.' "I mean, yes! And they're not going to tell _anyone_ that we made out, because if they do, we'll tell about the money."

"At least they know about us," Lance reasoned. "Not that there's an us," he said hastily for fear of sounding too keen. Which he was.

His body grew hot as Pietro kissed him softly, bringing their bodies naughtily close. "There is tonight," he purred. "And we've got a lot of cash to blow. Put your best clothes on, and meet down here at five o' clock. Over and out."

Pietro saluted and sped away to his room before Lance could object to the plan. Completely, ridiculously lovestruck, Lance suddenly realised that it was raining. And he was soaked.


	13. Chapter 13

Oh readers... Sorry for the delay. Would you believe I've only just got the internet in my new flat? Terrible!

It was a rather suspicious scenario. Todd and Fred were hiding round the back of the crates in the docks, clad in Ninja-black and concealing two bulging suitcases of cash. It was dark, and Todd was currently on the lookout while Fred sat on the suitcases like a nesting hen.

"Are you sure they're coming?" asked Fred. He pulled at his black polo neck, trying to get some cool air into the too-tight garment.

Todd made a loud tut of disapproval. "Ray and Blue are X-Men, aren't they? They fuckin' love a crisis, yo."

"It'll be nice to see Ray again," Fred said wistfully, staring out into the distance.

"Man, I love that guy!" Todd agreed with enthusiasm. "Not in a gay way," he added hastily, still rather affected by the idea of Lance and Pietro doing _things _in his bedroom.

Fred withdrew a banana from his pocket, peeled it and started munching thoughtfully. "So... What'll happen with the money?"

"We'll ask 'em to hide it for us," said Todd, with a little sigh. "It's just not safe with us anymore. Lance and Quickie _know_, yo. I'd be surprised if they hadn't already taken a little cash. Hell, maybe they took it all and _eloped._"

"Eloped! They wouldn't leave us! Would they?" Fred's face fell as he imagined Pietro and Lance in Las Vegas – Pietro, of course, in the bridal gown.

"Naw," Todd replied quickly. "But the money might come between us, and that's why it's gotta go."

His eyes lit up as he saw two dark figures sneaking towards the crates. "Psst! Over here!" he stage-whispered.

In a puff of smoke, Kurt and Ray arrived next to the boys. Much like Lance's reaction to Pietro's super-speed, Ray stumbled with confusion after being teleported, staring wide-eyed at his new surroundings.

"I don't think I like teleporting, Kurt," he concluded. His face crinkled into a friendly smile and he raised a hand to high-five Todd and Fred. "How's it going, guys?"

Todd couldn't disguise the slight scowl on his face. "We'd be better if you hadn't _abandoned_ us, y'know..."

Ray held up his hands in mock defence. "Hey, we can still hang out, right?"

Fred pouted bitterly as if he were the one Ray had dumped. "Yeah, but it won't be the same..."

"They're still sore about me ending it with Quicksilver," Ray explained to Kurt, who looked from person to person as if he was watching a very strange tennis match. "Speaking of which..." his eyes took on a glimmer of excitement. "How's he getting on with Lance?"

Once again, the memory of Pietro and Lance kissing flashed unwanted into Todd's head. Ray's knowing grin suggested that he just might have been in on it...

"You _orchestrated _this!" Todd said suddenly to Ray, recoiling in horror. Ray and Kurt shared a look of surprise that somebody who used the word 'yo' for punctuation could know such a word as 'orchestrated.'

Todd turned to Kurt, looking most disturbed. "Do you know what they did? They made out in my bedroom! In my _bedroom,_ man!"

Kurt's mouth dropped open. "Pietro and Lance made out? _Lance_ made out with Pietro_?_ That's weird... That's really weird..."

Ray didn't seem to think it was weird, opting instead for a little victory dance. "Yes! Aw, I knew they should be together!"

Fred screwed up his face as if he were chewing on a lemon studded with salt. "I don't see it. Pietro's crazy, and Lance has got major anger management issues. If they fight..." his grimace deepened. "I think they might kill each other."

"No way. Trust me, boys, they're gonna love each other," Ray insisted, smiling with true benevolence.

"Since when was Lance _gay?_" gasped Kurt, who had always seen Lance as a super-macho manly man. Todd pulled a 'who the hell knows?' face.

"He doesn't have to be gay," Fred reasoned. "He might just like Pietro. And as guys go, Pietro's pretty girly."

Todd shook his head, still stunned by the idea of his Rocky and Speedy _together_. "I dunno, yo... Anyway, we got bigger problems to worry about," he said, gesturing to the suitcases under Fred's bulk. "The mon-ey," he whispered dramatically.

Kurt backed away. "You... you're not giving it away, are you?"

"NO!" said Todd and Fred in stereo.

"Pietro and Lance found the money and we need to get it out of the house," Fred explained, patting the suitcases surreptitiously. "If you could hide it for us -"

"We can't hide it for you!" Kurt exploded, tearing at his blueish hair. "We have too much money as it is, and an army of suspicious X-Men asking questions 24/7 is killing us!"

"It's major stress," Ray agreed. It was only then that Todd and Fred noticed that Ray and Kurt were carrying two large rucksacks. "We brought our money, hoping that we could come to some sort of agreement."

Now, nothing appealed to Todd as much as the word 'agreement.' His face immediately formed a devilish grin. "An agreement, huh? What did you have in mind?"

Kurt and Ray shared a smug look, and Kurt handed Todd a handwritten advertisement that read: FUNDALSKI'S PIZZA PLACE FOR SALE.

Ray put one arm around Todd's shoulders and one around Fred's tree-trunk of a waist. "How do you fancy going into business together?"

...

"My, my, don't we look pretty?" a sultry male voice purred from the doorway.

Lance pulled nervously at his form-fitting black shirt, feeling like he was going to the gallows instead of on a date. Obviously, Pietro looked stunning. He was wearing a slimline grey tee-shirt so low cut that it practically showed nipple. Only Pietro would have got away with wearing something so daring – especially when he had teamed the top with extremely tapered black jeans and a red scarf draped around his beautifully sculpted neck. Lance felt dull in comparison in his shirt and the pair of jeans that he saved for going out, purely because they weren't ripped at the knees.

Pietro cocked his head to one side, squinted and wrinkled his nose in an elaborate display of scrutiny. "Hey, Johnny Depp... Did you brush your hair?"

"Johnny Depp?" A rush of triumph spread through Lance. Pietro had many hair comparisons for Lance, ranging from Axl Rose to Lionel Ritchie. Johnny Depp, however, didn't seem so much of an insult.

Suddenly uncharacteristically shy, Pietro dropped his gaze. "Sure, why the hell not?" he said. Then he lifted his head, eyes blazing anew. "So, where are we going on our d-a-t-e?"

He found it beyond weird to think of himself going on a date with Lance, and he was sure that Lance thought likewise.

Lance scratched his newly shaven chin awkwardly. "Let's not call it a date," he concluded. "It's just you and me going out together. I mean, yeah, we've, uh, kissed and stuff now... but... uh... We don't have to call it a date." He looked at Pietro pleadingly. "Do we?"

"Nope," Pietro said swiftly, brightening with relief. "Dating's too conventional. Why go through all those formalities?"

"Yeah," Lance sighed. His posture immediately changed, relaxing into his usual slightly goofy stance. "That said, we have quite a lot of cash to blow tonight. Is it too datey to have dinner together?"

Pietro's eyes flashed with naughtiness. "Depends how hot... sticky... juicy... tender... the food is." His tongue savoured the words, lingering over each one like expensive chocolate.

Lance gulped. There was no way he could play hard to get with Maximoff, not anymore. He rested his hand on the tiny small of Pietro's back, drumming his fingers over the sensual spot. "Let's buy champagne," he murmured to Pietro, who shivered deliciously every time Lance brushed the hollow of his coccyx. "And enormous steaks... And let's go out to a club, just me and you, and you can teach me to dance... And I'll kiss you; I'll kiss you a lot... Then we'll go to the park and sit under the stars, and you can teach me all the constellations, and I'll kiss you even more..."

Pietro opened his lidded eyes a notch. "What makes you think I know the constellations?"

"Because," Lance kissed his neck, "you're a nerd."

"Oh," Pietro arched an eyebrow as if to contest this, but said nothing. "Anyway, where were we? Some schmaltzy crap about going to the park and looking at stars and kissing... What happens after that?"

A quiver of anxiety rippled the muscle in Lance's jaw. He styled it out with the foolproof Instant Subject Change of looking at his ancient black Casio and loudly exclaiming, "Look at the time! We'd better go!"

A skunk wearing discount cologne could not have been less subtle. Lance was nervous. He wanted it desperately; he'd dreamt about it for months, but the idea of _actually _having sex with Pietro frightened him more than going into battle without his helmet. All the worries he'd had about losing his virginity to a girl resurfaced horribly and intensified. How did sex with a boy even work? Would he be giving the sex or getting the sex, or would they take turns?

Pietro brought him out of his reverie with a sharp, impatient jab in the side. "So, are we going or not? I've got five hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket and trust me," he dropped his voice and treated Lance to a saucy wink, "it's hot enough down there already!"

"Behold, the incredible sleaze," snorted Lance. He squinted into the horizon and saw the rusty, rattly, brown death-trap of a local bus coming up the hill. Pietro groaned as Lance made a little bow like a proper gentlemen. "Your chariot awaits, my lord!"

"Five hundred dollars in my pocket and we get the frickin' bus," muttered Pietro under his breath. But it was all strangely symbolic – there they were, leaving their shitty house in a shitty cul de sac in an incredibly shitty mode of transport. It wasn't what they were leaving that was important; it was where they were going, and that had real potential for glory.


	14. Chapter 14

A wee note: Thank you for some truly amazing reviews – I have to give special thanks to Nemhaine42 who has drawn another tremendous picture inspired by this fic on Deviant Art. .com/#/d312kpx Super, uber mega-thanks Nemhaine; you rock! And Lance likes rocks. Also, if you haven't done so already, please toddle over to read Hey Rockstar by Gambitgirl1974 – if you like Lietro, you'll love this funny, VERY sexy read... .net/s/6236623/1/Hey_Rockstar

...

"I could get used to this," Lance said, leaning back with a cigar in one hand and a dangerously tilted champagne flute in the other.

The lighting in the suave bar gave Pietro's skin a moonish glow. Sated on a gourmet three-course dinner with vintage champagne, he drew on his cigarillo thoughtfully.

"I think this is our only shot at being rich, Lancey. Pretty good at it, aren't we?"

Lance let Pietro refill his champagne flute. It was the first time he had ever tasted champagne, and while he definitely preferred beer, he revelled in the air of elegance. The food had been orgasmic after years of eating dry cereal for three meals a day. Fat, pink langoustines dripping with garlic butter for Starters, followed by a succulent rosy breast of duck l'orange; and the crowning glory a dark, decadent Aztec chocolate parfait with real gold leaf flaked over the top.

"God, the food was good..." sighed Lance, eyes half-closed with drowsy pleasure. "I can't believe I'm here... with all this money... with you. Seriously, this has been the best night of my life!"

Pietro almost swooned. "Hold your horses, the night's not over yet," he said with a knowing smirk.

"Just keeps getting better," smiled Lance. He glanced around the bar, and when the coast was clear, he planted a deep kiss on Pietro's lips.

"Rather risqué of you," Pietro remarked, sipping his champagne delicately. He had shown impeccable manners throughout the night; he knew exactly which cutlery to use and when and he was familiar with even the most gourmet foods. He even spoke French to the waiter (despite the waiter being from Chicago), ordering Lance's food with delightful chivalry.

"How do you know all this posh stuff?" asked Lance, typically inarticulate.

For the first time that night, Pietro blushed. "Mph fuffer," he said, cigarillo in mouth.

"What?"

Pietro took the cigarillo out of his mouth and balanced it preciously against the side of the ashtray. "My father."

"Magneto?"

"No," was Pietro's prim response. "The man behind Magneto, my father."

Lance thought it best not to argue with Pietro about his dear old dastardly Daddy. "Yeah. Sorry. Your father."

An unmistakeably wistful look lit Pietro's eyes. "You know every year at Christmas, when you think I'm visiting my foster parents?"

Despite everybody knowing full well that Pietro was really seeing his father, Lance nodded.

"I'm actually on a cruise," grinned Pietro, enjoying the drama of dislodging an enormous secret. "With the Jewish Scientific Society – my d- my father takes me along as a plus-one. He taught me everything," Pietro said with pride, eyes daring Lance to challenge him. "All about fine wines, and etiquette – that's manners, for yokels like you –or how to conduct yourself to seem better than you really are. Tell me that's not fantastic parenting."

It was hard to imagine Magneto doing anything fatherly. Try as he might, Lance still couldn't imagine Señor Buckethead as Pietro's dad. He was always beset by ridiculous images of the Master of Magnetism in full battle-gear, helmet and all, doing generic dad things such as playing catch with Pietro. He would see Magneto ruffling Pietro's hair and booming, "Good on ya, sport!" like the typical American family-man, which Magneto was definitely not.

"He takes you on a cruise?" barked Lance, champagne flying from his mouth in a most impolite manner. He was suddenly aware of how different their backgrounds were, and how ashamed he was of his own father.

"It's his way of making things up to me. Besides, who else could he take? He's not exactly popular," Pietro pointed out, pouring the last of the champagne into his glass. It fascinated Lance that Pietro always stood up when he poured champagne – was that etikett, or whatever Pietro called it, or was it just classic Maximoffian showing off?

"Suppose not," shrugged Lance. "Must be pretty awesome going on a cruise..."

"Absolute luxury," Pietro said deliberately slowly, emphasising each syllable with a seductive pout. "Fine wine, fine dining, top class musicians and the ocean to rock you to sleep in a plush king-size bed..."

Lance pictured a tuxedo-clad Pietro waltzing around an old-fashioned liner. "Is it like the Titanic?"

Pietro's lip curled in an arrogant sneer. "No, Lance, the cruise doesn't normally end in the middle of the Atlantic, and this may seem crazy, but the ship doesn't usually sink."

Lance was going to call Pietro a smartass, but he didn't know whether one could say "ass" in such a classy establishment. "Smart..._butt_."

"Mon dieu, mon dieu, language like zat in a place like zis!" crooned Pietro, waving a finger as if Lance were a naughty child. He crossed his eyes and grinned sheepishly at Lance's confused reaction.

Pietro stood up to refill the champagne flutes, only to find the bottle empty. Upending the bottle, he tapped the bottom of it like it was a very large bottle of tomato sauce.

"It's gone," Lance reminded him.

"Of course it is," Pietro muttered to himself. He arched at black eyebrow at Lance and smouldered devilishly. "Hello... I think the champagne's kicking in."

...

"_Why _have you bought me to a shut-down pizza place?" Wanda demanded, stabbing a black lace-gloved finger at the tattered 'CLOSED' sign on the door.

"All will be revealed," said Todd. Since they left the house, he had answered Wanda's frequent questions with every vague cliché possible from "Wait and see" to "Time will tell."

"When did you turn into a Magic 8 Ball?" grumbled Wanda. Why had Todd and Fred dragged her all this way to stand outside a grubby old pizza place with newspaper plastered over the windows? She was unnerved by the secretive, almost _itchy_ sense of glee that Todd and Freddy radiated.

If Todd hadn't been experimenting with his look lately, she'd have found it strange that he was wearing a brownish green suit with a matching beige shirt and tie. He looked, she thought rather cattily, like a wallflower at a Bar Mitzvah. And Fred was also dressed 'smartly' – his suit black and formidably tent-like, jacket sticking out like the prow of a ship.

And if that wasn't weird enough, two X-Men appeared in a puff of indigo smoke, also wearing suits.

Kurt Wagner nodded sharply to Todd and Fred, not seeing Wanda. He was wearing the kind of straight-laced, nice-boy navy blue suit that was usually reserved for religious occasions. The other boy stumbled a moment, wafting away excess smoke.

"Wassup, Ray!" beamed Todd, waving happily.

Ray, on the other hand, went straight to Wanda, high-fiving her with strangely similar black fishnet gloves.

Ray's version of 'business dress' was a little more alternative. He was wearing an Edwardian winged collar with an electric blue bow tie, teamed with a black leather jacket and black skinny jeans. On his feet were, of course, electric blue Dr Marten's patent boots, which Wanda coveted immediately.

"Are you in on this?" he asked her with a devious grin.

"Not a clue," she replied with a smile of her own. His eyes were very green.

"Well, things are about to get a little bit crazy, Miss Maximoff," he said, offering her his arm in a gentlemanly manner as the odd quintet entered Fundalski's. Todd noted this with a frown that made a tiny pucker in his chin. Wanda only touched people if she liked them.

The old parlour smelt of fresh paint, cardboard and bleach. It was designed like an old-fashioned diner, with several rows of bottle-green leather booths. The kitchen towards the back was marked with a makeshift notice that read 'No enter, thankyou.' A man who must have been Mr Fundalski emerged from it a little red-faced, wiping his porky hands on a straining pair of slacks.

"Ah, you came!" he sang, spreading out his arms with delight.

"Welcome, welcome," he said, shaking all the boys' hands in an elaborate fashion. When he got to Wanda, he kissed her once on one cheek, twice on the other, and repeated this action several times. She grimaced at his custom, surreptitiously wiping off the spit with her thumb as soon as he pulled away.

"You are looking rather young," Fundalski said, looking from face to face. "Yes, very young..."

"We're all perfectly legal, experienced businessmen," lied Todd, with an uncharacteristic note of calm assurance in his voice and not a hint of a 'yo.'

"Businessmen!" shrieked Wanda, before Ray stepped in and silenced her with a polite nod.

"And business_women, _sorry Wanda_. _Equal opportunities are very important to us," he added to Fundalski with another nod that at once said 'I am sincere' and 'stop talking, Wanda.'

And then Fred stepped forward, towering over a gawping Fundalski. "If you're still not sold on the idea, maybe this'll change your mind."

To Wanda, the innocent bystander, this situation could have been dreadfully misconstrued. Wanda couldn't see what Fred showed Fundalski, but whatever it was made the old man swear prolifically in Polish. Having some childhood knowledge of Polish, Wanda understood that Fundalski had said something about mothers, goats and turnips.

"I... I cannot take all of that!" gasped Fundalski, which only intensified the possibility for innuendo. "This cannot possibly be legal..."

He turned around to face Wanda, revealing exactly what had made him swear so creatively. She was only half-surprised to see that it was a cheque for an extortionate amount of money.

"Well, this explains everything," she said under her breath, arching a black heavily pencilled brow.

Ray clasped Fundalski's hand around the cheque, talking very quietly and evenly as if he was consoling him. "We know it's a bit more than your asking price, but we want you to have it. In fact, truth be told, we _need _you to have it. Mr Fundalski, you're a good man – we're good people too. You don't need to question the money. It's yours."

Here was a man born to win hearts. Fundalski nodded his head with a throaty sniff and busied himself with some legal papers, believing every word that Ray said. Wanda was alarmed to find that she believed Ray too – why question the money when it had made such wonderful things possible? God, she was turning into a sap.

Without any further questions, Ray (the oldest, legally eighteen and illegally twenty-six) signed the papers and read through all the necessary information. Wanda proved to be indispensable, as much of Fundalski's instructions and contracts were written in illiterate Polish. Meanwhile, Todd, Fred and Kurt toured the premises, checking out the space and potential. Every so often, Ray and Wanda would hear a loud excited exclamation, like "Oh man, we OWN a kitchen!" or "Is that a rat or a mop, yo?" and despite herself, Wanda laughed.

"You're remarkably okay with this," said Ray as he scanned the mind-boggling accounts book for a number that he could understand. "Aren't you just a smidge suspicious?"

Wanda rolled her large grey eyes. "I'm in the Brotherhood, everything is suspicious. Look, I've known about the money for a while now. I just never knew there was _this much_ of it, or that goody-goodies like you were in on it."

"Who are you calling a goody-goody?" teased Ray with a warm chuckle. He looked at Wanda with a distinct glitter in his eyes. "So, I guess we're partners now."

"P-partners?" Wanda coughed. What was Ray suggesting? It really was very warm in here. She looked away from Ray and fanned her face energetically with a wad of counterfeit zlotys.

Sensing Wanda's discomfort, Ray closed the accounts book and gave her a serious look. "Business partners," he explained, hastily. "I didn't mean... Unless..."

His eyes posed a question that Wanda had never thought about until now. When Pietro was going out with Ray, she simply saw him as a cool, kind and incredibly attractive person. Now she had to keep reminding herself that Ray was Pietro's _ex_.

She frowned. "But aren't you...?"

"No, I'm not," answered Ray patiently, although he had explained his anything-goes sexuality many times to many different people.

Wanda pulled her face into an expression of deepest gravity. "So you're not a twin fetishist? Damn, that's a shame. I was hoping that after Pietro, you'd have to do me and then try us together. Damn," she repeated with a wicked grin.

Speechless for a second, Ray fiddled with a counterfeit zloty, which on closer inspection was called a zlotf. "Oh man... I like to think I'm open-minded, but... Man..."

"Sorry," Wanda said, suddenly painfully self-conscious. "Dark sense of humour. Guess I picked it up in the asylum... Heh..."

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ she berated herself as Ray's brow wrinkled with concern. She had always vowed never, ever to mention the asylum – it would just scare people off, or worse, make them feel sorry for her.

But Ray wasn't scared. Neither did he attempt to patronise her. More than anything, he looked interested, smiling at her with those elfin green eyes.

"You're pretty cool, Wanda," was all that he said. "We should hang out sometime."

Wanda glowed inside from Ray's compliment. Today had been a good day – she'd gained semi-ownership of a restaurant (whatever the boys intended to do with it) and a very exciting new friend...

"You're quite cool yourself," she said with a nod to Ray's boots. "I've had my eye on those boots all night, where can I buy a pair like that?"

Ray laughed, "Little tip I picked up from your bro – these are spray-painted by yours truly. But I've seen a killer pair of black and neon-green DMs in the Mall – wanna come shopping with me tomorrow and check them out?"

Oh god. Potential date _and _potential new boots! Wanda's stomach fluttered happily, and she struggled to contain her excitement as she agreed, "I'd love to!"

Todd, who had appeared a moment ago to find out if Wanda wanted to help him pick a colour scheme, sighed and withdrew back into the kitchen unseen.


	15. Chapter 15

So much love to my reviewers! Thanks for all comments, criticisms and all. And thank you, strangely, to a sprained ankle which has given me the time off work to write this.

"This must be the hundredth time I've been in your room, but it feels weird now..."

Pietro reclined against Lance's knees, fighting sleep.

"'s'probably because I cleaned it for once," smiled Lance, fiddling absent-mindedly with Pietro's earlobe, rolling his fingers over the tiny crystal stud that Pietro always wore.

A quick scan of the room was enough to make Pietro snort dismissively. Lance cleaned like the average male; hoovering the one area of the floor that wasn't covered with clothes and old magazines, and briefly flashing a duster around surfaces that were strewn with papers, bowls and glasses. But Lance had, interestingly enough, removed all of his posters of women in various states of undress, the way he had always done when Kitty was coming over.

"Where's all the babes?" teased Pietro, waving a hand in the direction of the notably blank walls. "Don't tell me you're going to replace them all with pictures of oily, muscly gay dudes."

Lance bristled slightly. He had removed the posters more out of habit than anything else; he knew that on many occasions Pietro had seen the posters. In fact, they had shared many an evening lying on that very bed playing 'guess her nipple colour.'

Man, Pietro was right. It was different now – they weren't there to play pranks or smoke weed or do homework. Lance anticipated sex with equal measures of fear and excitement. This bed, or Pietro's bed, was going to become _their _bed, the site of awesome filth and depravity.

"Yellow," Pietro suddenly declared, making Lance draw back from him in perplexity. Pietro had a habit of being so ahead of everybody else that he began conversations halfway through without knowing it.

"Yellow? What's yellow?"

Pietro rolled his eyes as if the answer was obvious. "Mystique's nipples. Gotta be yellow."

Lance immediately settled into the familiarity of the game, not in the slightest bit alarmed by the thought of a topless Brotherhood boss. "I beg to differ. They're black or very, very dark blue."

"How big?" Pietro yawned, shifting himself in one graceful move so that he was lying next to Lance. "Dinner plates? Remember, she's had kids."

"Naw," said Lance, catching Pietro's yawn. He moved his arm so that Pietro could lay his head on his chest; with he did with surprising cuteness. "They're small and pointy and black, like blackberries."

The champagne, and the dancing, and the long walk home made longer by frequent kissing stops, added to the cuddling (lame as that sounded) overwhelmed the boys with tiredness.

"Think you might be right, Lancey," Pietro said, pressing his nose into the crook between Lance's ear and jaw that smelt musky and Lance-like. Comforting. "Tonight was pretty fucking fantastic, huh?"

Because it was flopping in Pietro's face, and certainly not through any kind of tenderness, Lance smoothed the silver-white hair off that pale forehead.

"Best night of my life," he agreed genuinely. "The food... The cigars... Your dancing..."

And Pietro's dancing was certainly noteworthy. After the restaurant, he took Lance to a small underground club where everybody seemed to know him. They were all fascinatingly beautiful, each with perfect sinewy bodies that made Lance feel horribly inadequate.

They had a few drinks, and Lance talked to an impossibly cool black boy with an afro and oversized clear wayfarers who told him that they came here to dance. No, not ordinary club dancing – serious professional stuff. Lance broke out in a sweat, hoping that nobody would ask him to dance; especially not Pietro. With chimp-like arms and the flailing legs of a baby deer, Lance just didn't know what to do with himself on the dancefloor.

It was then that he noticed that Pietro was missing; in fact, everyone was gone apart from the bartender and the way-too-fashionable guy next to him.

The lights went off. Lance could see the dark forms of dancers appearing, holding positions. And then the lights came up on Pietro, standing on the steps above the others in a notorious hat-tilting, crotch-grabbing pose that needed no 'Cha'mone!' for Lance to know what was about to happen.

In just over four minutes, Pietro and his dancer friends performed a shockingly flawless routine to Smooth Criminal that might have seemed a little dated if it wasn't for the sheer quality of the dancing. Lance watched open-mouthed, shamelessly resembling a halibut. Pietro could do _everything; _even dance as well as the King of Pop. It looked so effortless, so slick, whatever Pietro did just flowed. When he moon-walked, his feet really appeared not to touch the floor – Lance wondered a little jealously if Pietro's super-speed was an unfair advantage in this. That infamous lean from the video was executed without a hitch, Pietro having the nerve to brush off imaginary lapels afterwards as if it was nothing. And god, Lance was mesmerised by the typical MJ pelvic thrusts... Pietro oozed sexy, confident power and Lance couldn't quite believe that this was his best friend, maybe more than his best friend.

"That dance was pretty hardcore," mumbled Pietro, bringing Lance back into the present. "I swear Michael Jackson must've been a mutant to dance like that."

"You were hot," said Lance, still troubled by those thrusts and crotch-grabs.

Pietro brought his lips to the patch of skin where his nose has been, kissing softly, making Lance arch into the touch. "I'm always hot."

Perhaps they weren't that tired after all.

...

"Wanf shum chickenf?"

Mouth full, Fred thrust a breaded drumstick in Todd's face. Food always cheered Fred up when he was down, but Todd just sighed and looked out across the misty basketball courts, eyes pink and puffy.

"C'mon," cajoled Fred unconvincingly. "I can't eat all this chicken myself."

"Freddy, you could eat a fuckin' ostrich and still have room for a dodo," Todd muttered. "I told you, I'm not hungry, yo. I'm... I'm depressed, okay?"

Fred patted Todd's shoulder, near flattening the skinny teen. "Don't be sad, Todd. We got lots to think about – we got the restaurant!"

He was sure that this would get Todd excited, but the boy just sighed again. "Yeah, we got the restaurant. But I didn't get the girl."

An owl hooted in the distance. Fred wondered whether Wanda had got home alright. Todd was upset because Ray walked her home, and he was convinced that there was something going on between the pair.

"I thought you didn't like her like that anymore," offered Fred.

Todd sniffed nasally and rather disgustingly. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't, yo. It ain't about love, anyway."

It was beginning to get too cold to sit outside. Fred bit his lip and hoped that Todd would want to stop moping soon. "Well, what is it about, then?"

"She's my friend!" yelled Todd, sending a pile of leaves flying as he scuffed the ground angrily. "She was hanging out with me! And now Ray's come along, she's gonna stop hanging out with me! I mean, why would she want to?" spat Todd bitterly. "I ain't cool like Ray, or nice like Ray, or good lookin' like Ray. I'm just the underdog. Nah," he added as a bitter afterthought. "I'm an under_frog, _slimy and disgusting and always second best."

"No you're not, buddy," Fred told him evenly. "You're overreacting. Did I throw a tantrum when you started hanging out with Wanda? People can have more than one friend, you know. Or a boyfriend and a friend. Whatever it is, you've gotta be prepared to share her. And you like Ray, don't you?"

"Who doesn't like Ray?" Todd asked. Fred was always good at making him see things in different ways.

"Well, if you like Ray, and you like Wanda, what's the problem? You could hang out with them both," Fred said simply. His outlook always glossed over complex emotions, making everything look a lot brighter.

Todd shrugged his bony jutting shoulders. "What if they get together, Freddy?"

Fred gave Todd a very sage look. In his suit he looked very impressive. "What if they do, Todd? Are you going to stop her from being happy?"

The moon drifted out from behind a cloud, bringing Todd the sad realisation that nothing would happen between himself and Wanda. But she could still be his friend – Fred was right, he didn't have to lose her. It would be pretty cool if she started going out with Ray – Todd had to admit, Ray would be a perfect first boyfriend for her. A boyfriend he could never be.

"You're right, Fred. Being jealous ain't gonna get me anywhere," Todd said, filled with a strange maturity. "And I've always got you, my own personal Oprah. Thanks, dude," he high-fived Fred, clasping the giant hand on contact. "I got your back."

"And I got yours," grinned Fred toothily. "Now can we go home? We have a business to run now, you know."

"Hell yeah we do!" Todd punched the air excitedly, beatboxing all the way home. He felt more like himself than he had for ages.

...

"So you're initiated now," Pietro murmured, lying like a Classical nude. The moonlight caught all the beautiful dips and shadows in his athletic physique. His body and the way that he used it were better than Lance had ever dreamed (and Lance had imagined this furiously every night for the past few months.)

"Initiated both ways," moaned Lance, although he didn't mind too much. In fact, he had actually _asked_ to be taken. He blamed those Michael Jackson pelvic thrusts for arousing that particular curiosity.

Pietro stroked Lance's muscular flank from hip to elbow, cooing in mock sympathy. "Hurts, doesn't it? I'm a little sore myself – you, mister, are a stallion!"

Lance propped himself up on elbow, frowning. "I wasn't too rough, was I?"

"I like a bit of rough," Pietro winked, grabbing Lance's hair to push him back down and kissing him swiftly. Always egotistical, he couldn't resist asking how he was.

"Thankfully not too rough for a young virgin like me," simpered Lance, batting his long thick eyelashes. He wasn't sure if he'd liked it or not, but he'd probably try it again. He liked the feeling of submission. Pietro gave every inch of his body attention and made Lance feel _claimed._

The boys suddenly realised how quiet and dark it was. Drowsy, post-coital, Pietro looked at an imaginary watch. Lance laughed and captured the silly wrist, holding onto that hand.

"Bedtime," Pietro said firmly, not that Lance was about to argue. They curled their bodies around each other, Lance's strong arms giving a sweet sense of security.

Just as Pietro was drifting off, he noticed that there was one thing on the wall Lance hadn't removed. It was a photo from last Hallowe'en, Lance dressed as Super Mario and Pietro as Luigi. _What a dorky thing to leave on the wall, _Pietro thought sleepily. But it still made him smile inside just a little.

AN – The term 'underfrog' belongs to Nemhaine42.


End file.
